充满乐趣的生产过程

A Playful Production Process

对于游戏设计师(以及所有人)

For Game Designers (and Everyone)

理查德·勒马尔尚

Richard Lemarchand

艾米·亨尼格 (Amy Hennig) 撰写的前言

Foreword by Amy Hennig

麻省理工学院出版社

The MIT Press

马萨诸塞州剑桥

Cambridge, Massachusetts

伦敦,英国

London, England

 

 

© 2021 麻省理工学院

© 2021 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

保留所有权利。未经出版商书面许可,不得以任何电子或机械方式(包括影印、录制或信息存储和检索)复制本书的任何部分。

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

未注明来源的插图由 Richard Lemarchand 绘制。

Uncredited illustrations by Richard Lemarchand.

美国国会图书馆出版品目錄數據

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

姓名:勒马尔尚 (Lemarchand),理查德 (Richard),作家。

Names: Lemarchand, Richard, author.

标题:好玩的制作过程:为游戏设计师(以及所有人)而设 / Richard Lemarchand;Amy Hennig 作序

Title: A playful production process : for game designers (and everyone) / Richard Lemarchand ; foreword by Amy Hennig

描述:马萨诸塞州剑桥:麻省理工学院出版社,[2021] | 包括书目参考和索引。

Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

标识符:LCCN 2020052141 | ISBN 9780262045513(精装本)

Identifiers: LCCN 2020052141 | ISBN 9780262045513 (hardcover)

主题:LCSH:视频游戏——设计。| 交互式多媒体。

Subjects: LCSH: Video games—Design. | Interactive multimedia.

分类:LCC GV1469.3 .L46 2021 | DDC 794.8—dc23

Classification: LCC GV1469.3 .L46 2021 | DDC 794.8—dc23

LC 记录可在https:// lccn .loc .gov /2020052141上查阅

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020052141

d_r0

d_r0

 

 

致 Nova

To Nova

 

 

内容

Contents

  1. 艾米·亨尼格 (Amy Hennig) 撰写的前言
  2. Foreword by Amy Hennig
  3. 介绍
  4. Introduction
  5. 第一阶段:构思——提出想法
  6. Phase One: Ideation—Making Ideas
  7.   1 如何开始
  8.   1    How to Begin
  9.   2 蓝天思维
  10.   2    Blue Sky Thinking
  11. 头脑风暴
  12. Brainstorming
  13. 自动化
  14. Automatism
  15. 其他蓝天思维技巧
  16. Other Blue Sky Thinking Techniques
  17. 设计师、电子表格和列表的力量
  18. Designers, Spreadsheets, and the Power of the List
  19.   3 研究
  20.   3    Research
  21. 互联网研究
  22. Research on the Internet
  23. 形象研究
  24. Image Research
  25. 不要忽视图书馆
  26. Don’t Neglect the Library
  27. 实地考察
  28. Field Trips
  29. 采访
  30. Interviews
  31. 阴影
  32. Shadowing
  33. 研究笔记
  34. Research Notes
  35.   4 游戏原型设计:概述
  36.   4    Game Prototyping: An Overview
  37. 游戏机制、动词和玩家活动
  38. Game Mechanics, Verbs, and Player Activities
  39. 三种原型设计
  40. Three Kinds of Prototyping
  41. 每个游戏开发者都是游戏设计师
  42. Every Game Developer Is a Game Designer
  43.   5 制作数字游戏原型
  44.   5    Making a Digital Game Prototype
  45. 选择和使用游戏引擎
  46. Choosing and Using a Game Engine
  47. 选择操作系统和硬件平台
  48. Choosing an Operating System and a Hardware Platform
  49. 将原型构建为玩具,而不是游戏
  50. Build Your Prototype as a Toy, Not a Game
  51. 声音对于数字游戏原型的重要性
  52. The Importance of Sound for Digital Game Prototypes
  53. 在数字原型上进行游戏测试和迭代
  54. Playtesting and Iterating on a Digital Prototype
  55. 我们应该制作多少个数字原型?
  56. How Many Digital Prototypes Should We Make?
  57. 何时遵循原型引导
  58. When to Follow Where a Prototype Leads
  59. 构思交付成果:原型构建
  60. Ideation Deliverable: Prototype Builds
  61. 杰作综合症
  62. Masterpiece Syndrome
  63. 原型游戏测试的情感层面
  64. The Emotional Side of Prototype Playtests
  65.   6. 沟通作为游戏设计技能
  66.   6    Communication as a Game Design Skill
  67. 沟通、协作、领导力和冲突
  68. Communication, Collaboration, Leadership, and Conflict
  69. 最基本的沟通技巧
  70. The Most Basic Communication Skills
  71. 三明治
  72. Sandwiching
  73. 尊重、信任和同意
  74. Respect, Trust, and Consent
  75.   7 个项目目标
  76.   7    Project Goals
  77. 体验目标
  78. Experience Goals
  79. 写下你的体验目标
  80. Writing Down Your Experience Goals
  81. 设计目标
  82. Design Goals
  83. 综合起来,体验目标和设计目标为我们提供了项目目标
  84. Taken Together, Experience Goals and Design Goals Give Us Our Project Goals
  85. 曲目和成长
  86. Repertoire and Growth
  87. 考虑我们游戏的潜在受众
  88. Considering the Possible Audience for Our Game
  89. 成为专业游戏平台的开发者
  90. Becoming a Developer for a Specialized Game Platform
  91. 关于制定项目目标的建议
  92. Advice about Forming Your Project Goals
  93.   8 构思的终结
  94.   8    The End of Ideation
  95. 构思阶段应该持续多长时间?
  96. How Long Should the Ideation Phase Last?
  97. 关于原型设计的一些最终建议
  98. Some Final Advice about Prototyping
  99. 创意交付成果摘要
  100. A Summary of the Ideation Deliverables
  101. 第二阶段:前期制作——边做边设计
  102. Phase Two: Preproduction—Designing by Doing
  103.   9 掌控流程
  104.   9    Gaining Control of the Process
  105. 装配线和瀑布
  106. The Assembly Line and Waterfall
  107. 创造新事物
  108. Making Something New
  109. 前期制作期间的规划
  110. Planning during Preproduction
  111. 马克·塞尼和方法
  112. Mark Cerny and Method
  113. 预生产的价值
  114. The Value of Preproduction
  115. 10 什么是垂直切片?
  116. 10    What Is a Vertical Slice?
  117. 核心循环
  118. The Core Loop
  119. 三个 C
  120. The Three Cs
  121. 样本级别和 Blockmesh 设计过程
  122. Sample Levels and the Blockmesh Design Process
  123. 垂直切片样本级别的大小和质量
  124. The Size and Quality of Vertical Slice Sample Levels
  125. 美丽的角落
  126. The Beautiful Corner
  127. 垂直切片的挑战和回报
  128. The Challenge and Reward of the Vertical Slice
  129. 11 构建垂直切片
  130. 11    Building a Vertical Slice
  131. 从原型开始工作
  132. Work from a Prototype
  133. 创建游戏的早期序列——但不要从头开始
  134. Create an Early Sequence from the Game—but Don’t Make the Very Beginning Yet
  135. 迭代游戏的核心元素
  136. Iterate on the Core Elements of Your Game
  137. 致力于游戏引擎和硬件平台
  138. Commit to a Game Engine and Hardware Platform
  139. 践行良好家务管理
  140. Practice Good Housekeeping
  141. 开始添加调试功能
  142. Start to Add Debug Functions
  143. 尽早失败、快速失败、经常失败
  144. Fail Early, Fail Fast, Fail Often
  145. 在同一物理空间或在线协同工作
  146. Work in the Same Physical Space or Together Online
  147. 保存并分类你的设计材料
  148. Save and Categorize Your Design Materials
  149. 以项目目标为指导
  150. Be Guided by Your Project Goals
  151. 何时修改项目目标
  152. When to Modify Your Project Goals
  153. 我们通过构建垂直切片来做什么
  154. What We Are Doing by Building the Vertical Slice
  155. 预生产无法按常规安排
  156. Preproduction Cannot Be Scheduled Conventionally
  157. 时间盒
  158. Timeboxing
  159. 12 游戏测试
  160. 12    Playtesting
  161. 设计师模型、系统形象和用户模型
  162. The Designer’s Model, the System Image, and the User’s Model
  163. 可供性和标志
  164. Affordances and Signifiers
  165. 游戏测试的可读性和体验
  166. Playtesting for Legibility and Experience
  167. 游戏测试的最佳实践
  168. Best Practices for Playtesting
  169. 进行常规游戏测试
  170. Running Regular Playtests
  171. 评估游戏测试反馈
  172. Evaluating Playtest Feedback
  173. “我喜欢,我希望,如果......?”
  174. “I Like, I Wish, What If ?”
  175. 设计师和艺术家的游戏测试
  176. Playtesting for Designers and Artists
  177. 13 同心发展
  178. 13    Concentric Development
  179. 宇宙为何有层级结构——一个寓言
  180. Why the Universe Is Organized into Hierarchies—a Fable
  181. 什么是同心发展?
  182. What Is Concentric Development?
  183. 首先实现主要机制,直到它们完成
  184. Implement Primary Mechanics First until They Are Complete
  185. 实施二次力学和三次力学
  186. Implementing Secondary Mechanics and Tertiary Mechanics
  187. 同心开发和设计参数
  188. Concentric Development and Design Parameters
  189. 测试级别
  190. Test Levels
  191. 边抛光边使用
  192. Polish as You Go
  193. 不要使用默认值
  194. Don’t Use Defaults
  195. 波兰人也可以很朋克
  196. Polish Can Be Punk
  197. 同心开发、模块化和系统
  198. Concentric Development, Modularity, and Systems
  199. 迭代、评估和稳定性
  200. Iteration, Evaluation, and Stability
  201. 同心发展帮助我们管理时间
  202. Concentric Development Helps Us Manage Our Time
  203. 转向同心发展
  204. The Switch to Concentric Development
  205. 同心发展与垂直切片
  206. Concentric Development and the Vertical Slice
  207. 同心开发和敏捷
  208. Concentric Development and Agile
  209. 最大化未完成的工作量
  210. Maximizing the Amount of Work Not Done
  211. 同心发展的步伐
  212. The Pace of Concentric Development
  213. 14 预生产交付成果——垂直切片
  214. 14    Preproduction Deliverable—The Vertical Slice
  215. 交付垂直切片的构建
  216. Delivering a Build of the Vertical Slice
  217. 用其他材料支撑垂直切片
  218. Supporting the Vertical Slice with Other Materials
  219. 从创建垂直切片开始了解范围
  220. Learning about Scope from the Creation of the Vertical Slice
  221. 测试垂直切片
  222. Playtesting the Vertical Slice
  223. 重点测试我们的游戏标题和早期关键艺术
  224. Focus Testing Our Game’s Title and Early Key Art
  225. 15 反对紧缩
  226. 15    Against Crunch
  227. 游戏设计师的 16 个故事结构
  228. 16    Story Structure for Game Designers
  229. 亚里士多德的诗学
  230. Aristotle’s Poetics
  231. 弗赖塔格金字塔
  232. Freytag’s Pyramid
  233. 游戏结构反映故事结构
  234. Game Structures Mirror Story Structure
  235. 故事和游戏玩法都是分形的
  236. Stories and Gameplay Are Fractal
  237. 故事的组成部分
  238. The Components of Story
  239. 如何改善游戏中的故事
  240. How to Improve the Stories in Your Games
  241. 有疑问时
  242. When in Doubt
  243. 17 预生产交付成果——游戏设计宏
  244. 17    Preproduction Deliverable—The Game Design Macro
  245. 制作全面生产的地图
  246. Making a Map for Full Production
  247. 为什么要使用游戏设计宏?
  248. Why Use a Game Design Macro?
  249. 游戏设计宏和我们的项目目标
  250. The Game Design Macro and Our Project Goals
  251. 游戏设计宏的两个部分
  252. The Two Parts of a Game Design Macro
  253. 游戏设计概述
  254. The Game Design Overview
  255. 游戏设计宏观图表
  256. The Game Design Macro Chart
  257. 游戏设计宏图的行和列
  258. The Rows and Columns of the Game Design Macro Chart
  259. 游戏设计宏图表模板
  260. A Game Design Macro Chart Template
  261. 玩家目标、设计目标和情感节奏
  262. Player Goal, Design Goal, and Emotional Beat
  263. 玩家目标、设计目标和情感节奏之间关系的示例
  264. An Example of the Relationship between Player Goal, Design Goal, and Emotional Beat
  265. 游戏设计宏的优势
  266. The Advantages of a Game Design Macro
  267. 游戏设计宏已成定局
  268. The Game Design Macro Is Set in Stone
  269. 游戏设计宏是游戏设计圣经吗?
  270. Is the Game Design Macro a Game Design Bible?
  271. 18 编写游戏设计宏图
  272. 18    Writing a Game Design Macro Chart
  273. 宏观图表的粒度
  274. The Granularity of the Macro Chart
  275. 对游戏设计宏图进行排序
  276. Sequencing the Game Design Macro Chart
  277. 完善宏观图表
  278. Making the Macro Chart Complete
  279. 微设计
  280. Micro Design
  281. 非线性游戏和游戏设计宏观图表
  282. Nonlinear Games and the Game Design Macro Chart
  283. 游戏设计宏示例
  284. Example Game Design Macros
  285. 19 调度
  286. 19    Scheduling
  287. 简单调度
  288. Simple Scheduling
  289. 我们需要多少人时来制作我们的游戏?
  290. How Many Person-Hours Do We Have to Make Our Game?
  291. 最简单的时间表
  292. The Simplest Schedule
  293. 每个任务的简单计划信息
  294. Simple Schedule Information for Each Task
  295. 使用简单的时间表进行范围界定
  296. Scoping with a Simple Schedule
  297. 使用简单的时间表跟踪项目
  298. Tracking a Project Using a Simple Schedule
  299. 燃尽图
  300. The Burndown Chart
  301. 决定哪些可以删减
  302. Deciding What Can Be Cut
  303. 在燃尽图中重新安排
  304. Rescheduling in a Burndown Chart
  305. 燃尽图营造信任和尊重的氛围
  306. Burndown Charts Create an Atmosphere of Trust and Respect
  307. 20 项里程碑评论
  308. 20    Milestone Reviews
  309. 何时进行里程碑评审
  310. When to Run Milestone Reviews
  311. 内部和外部里程碑评审
  312. Internal and External Milestone Reviews
  313. 举行里程碑回顾
  314. Holding a Milestone Review
  315. 皮克斯智囊团
  316. The Pixar Braintrust
  317. 怎样的笔记才是好的笔记?
  318. What Makes a Good Note?
  319. 里程碑评审期间,演示游戏的开发者应该做什么?
  320. What Should the Presenting Game Developers Do during a Milestone Review?
  321. 向项目利益相关者展示
  322. Presenting to Project Stakeholders
  323. 里程碑审查过程的情感方面
  324. Emotional Aspects of the Milestone Review Process
  325. 21 前期制作的挑战
  326. 21    The Challenge of Preproduction
  327. 致力于设计
  328. Committing to a Design
  329. 如果预生产进展不顺利,就取消项目
  330. Canceling a Project if Preproduction Doesn’t Go Well
  331. 全面投入生产
  332. Onward into Full Production
  333. 预生产交付成果摘要
  334. A Summary of the Preproduction Deliverables
  335. 第三阶段:全面生产——建设与发现
  336. Phase Three: Full Production—Building and Discovering
  337. 22 全面生产的特征
  338. 22    The Character of Full Production
  339. 呈现垂直切片和游戏设计宏
  340. Presenting the Vertical Slice and Game Design Macro
  341. 完成你的任务列表
  342. Working through Your Task List
  343. 从预生产到全面生产的过渡转变
  344. Changing Gears in the Transition from Preproduction to Full Production
  345. 检查你的项目目标
  346. Checking In on Your Project Goals
  347. 站立会议
  348. Stand-Up Meetings
  349. 全面投产的里程碑
  350. The Milestones of Full Production
  351. 游戏应该按照什么顺序构建?
  352. What Order Should a Game Be Built In?
  353. 游戏感和趣味性
  354. Game Feel and Juiciness
  355. 全力投入生产
  356. Focuses for Full Production
  357. 在全面生产过程中何时冒险
  358. When to Take a Risk during Full Production
  359. 23 种测试类型
  360. 23    Types of Testing
  361. 非正式游戏测试
  362. Informal Playtesting
  363. 设计过程测试
  364. Design-Process Testing
  365. 质量保证测试
  366. QA Testing
  367. 自动化测试
  368. Automated Testing
  369. 面向公众的测试
  370. Public-Facing Testing
  371. 24 准备正式游戏测试
  372. 24    Preparing for a Formal Playtest
  373. 顽皮狗的正式游戏测试
  374. Formal Playtesting at Naughty Dog
  375. 适合每个人的正式游戏测试实践
  376. A Formal Playtesting Practice for Everyone
  377. 准备正式的游戏测试脚本
  378. Preparing a Formal Playtest Script
  379. 准备正式的游戏测试调查
  380. Preparing a Formal Playtest Survey
  381. 准备离职面谈
  382. Preparing for an Exit Interview
  383. 设计离职面试问题
  384. Devising Exit Interview Questions
  385. 重点测试游戏的标题、主要艺术和徽标设计
  386. Focus Testing Our Game’s Title, Key Art, and Logo Design
  387. 为正式游戏测试日做准备
  388. Preparing for the Day of the Formal Playtest
  389. 25 进行正式游戏测试
  390. 25    Running a Formal Playtest
  391. 在非正式环境中进行正式的游戏测试
  392. Formal Playtesting in an Informal Environment
  393. 寻找游戏测试员
  394. Finding Playtesters
  395. 寻找地点、安排时间并确定游戏测试协调员
  396. Finding a Location, Arranging a Time, and Deciding a Playtest Coordinator
  397. 准备场地
  398. Preparing the Location
  399. 游戏测试员的到来
  400. The Arrival of the Playtesters
  401. 游戏测试开始前
  402. Immediately before the Playtest Starts
  403. 游戏环节
  404. The Play Session
  405. 汇报会
  406. The Debrief Session
  407. 游戏测试后清理
  408. Clearing Up after the Playtest
  409. 分析游戏测试结果
  410. Analyzing the Playtest Results
  411. 根据正式游戏测试收到的反馈采取行动
  412. Acting on the Feedback Received from a Formal Playtest
  413. 处理棘手的反馈
  414. Dealing with Difficult Feedback
  415. 进入下一轮正式游戏测试
  416. Going into the Next Round of Formal Playtesting
  417. 26 项游戏指标
  418. 26    Game Metrics
  419. 顽皮狗的游戏指标
  420. Game Metrics at Naughty Dog
  421. 在游戏中实施指标
  422. Implementing Metrics in Your Game
  423. 指标数据和同意
  424. Metrics Data and Consent
  425. 测试指标数据系统
  426. Testing Metrics Data Systems
  427. 可视化指标数据
  428. Visualizing Metrics Data
  429. 游戏指标实施清单
  430. Game Metrics Implementation Checklist
  431. 游戏指标的机遇与局限
  432. The Opportunities and Limits of Game Metrics
  433. 27 Alpha 阶段和错误跟踪
  434. 27    The Alpha Phase and Bug Tracking
  435. 一种简单的错误跟踪方法
  436. A Simple Bug Tracking Method
  437. 28 阿尔法里程碑
  438. 28    The Alpha Milestone
  439. 特色与内容
  440. Features and Content
  441. 功能齐全
  442. Being Feature Complete
  443. 游戏序列完成
  444. Being Game Sequence Complete
  445. Alpha 提供的良好入职培训流程
  446. A Good Onboarding Sequence by Alpha
  447. Alpha 里程碑的作用
  448. The Role of the Alpha Milestone
  449. 在 Alpha 阶段选择游戏名称
  450. Choosing a Game Title at Alpha
  451. 总结 Alpha 里程碑
  452. Summarizing the Alpha Milestone
  453. Alpha 的里程碑评审
  454. The Milestone Review That Takes Place at Alpha
  455. 29 插入存根
  456. 29    Stubbing Things In
  457. 什么是存根 (Stub)?
  458. What Is a Stub?
  459. 电子游戏中的存根
  460. Stubs in Videogames
  461. 存根对象进程示例
  462. An Example Stub Object Process
  463. 存根和功能
  464. Stubs and Functionality
  465. 内容存根与同心开发
  466. Stubbing in Content versus Concentric Development
  467. 30 吸引玩家了解我们的游戏
  468. 30    Reaching the Audience for Our Game
  469. 制定营销计划
  470. Make a Marketing Plan
  471. 为你的游戏创建网站和新闻资料包,并联系媒体
  472. Make a Website and Press Kit for Your Game, and Contact the Press
  473. 为你的游戏开展社交媒体活动
  474. Running a Social Media Campaign for Your Game
  475. 与社交媒体影响者合作
  476. Working with Social Media Influencers
  477. 将游戏开发与专业营销相结合
  478. Integrating Game Development with Professional Marketing
  479. 31 Beta 里程碑
  480. 31    The Beta Milestone
  481. Beta 里程碑需要什么
  482. What’s Needed for the Beta Milestone
  483. 完整性和 Beta 里程碑
  484. Completeness and the Beta Milestone
  485. Beta 阶段、同心开发和游戏健康
  486. The Beta Phase, Concentric Development, and Game Health
  487. 致谢与归属
  488. Credits and Attribution
  489. 达到 Beta 里程碑的挑战
  490. The Challenge of Reaching the Beta Milestone
  491. Beta 里程碑总结
  492. Summarizing the Beta Milestone
  493. Beta 版的里程碑评审
  494. The Milestone Review That Takes Place at Beta
  495. 第四阶段:后期制作——定稿和润色
  496. Phase Four: Postproduction—Fixing and Polishing
  497. 32 后期制作阶段
  498. 32    The Postproduction Phase
  499. 后期制作需要多长时间?
  500. How Long Should Postproduction Take?
  501. 漏洞修复
  502. Bug Fixing
  503. 抛光
  504. Polishing
  505. 平衡
  506. Balancing
  507. 后期制作的特点
  508. The Character of Postproduction
  509. 视点的移动性
  510. Mobility of Viewpoint
  511. 后期制作浪潮
  512. Postproduction Waves
  513. 33 发布候选版本的里程碑
  514. 33    The Release Candidate Milestone
  515. 发布候选版本需要什么?
  516. What Is Needed for a Release Candidate?
  517. 从候选版本到金牌大师版本
  518. From Release Candidate to Gold Master
  519. 发布游戏
  520. Releasing the Game
  521. 34 认证流程
  522. 34    The Certification Process
  523. 认证流程时间表
  524. The Certification Process Timeline
  525. 通过和未通过证书
  526. Passing and Failing Cert
  527. 通过认证后更新游戏
  528. Updating Games after Passing Cert
  529. 内容分级
  530. Content Ratings
  531. 35 意想不到的游戏设计
  532. 35    Unexpected Game Design
  533. 意想不到的游戏设计类型
  534. Types of Unexpected Game Design
  535. 36 完成后
  536. 36    After We’ve Finished
  537. 发布游戏
  538. Releasing a Game
  539. 项目后回顾
  540. The Post-Project Review
  541. 项目结束后的休息
  542. Resting at the End of a Project
  543. 后项目忧郁
  544. Post-Project Blues
  545. 下一个项目
  546. The Next Project
  547. 研发
  548. R&D
  549. 从一些方向开始
  550. Starting with Some Direction
  551. 何时离开团队
  552. When to Leave a Team
  553. 回到起点
  554. Back to the Beginning
  555. 结语
  556. Epilogue
  557. 附录 A:好玩制作流程的四个阶段、里程碑和可交付成果
  558. Appendix A: The Four Phases, Milestones, and Deliverables of the Playful Production Process
  559. 附录 B:图 7.1 的转录
  560. Appendix B: Transcription of Figure 7.1
  561. 附录 C: 《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》的游戏设计宏(细节)来自图 18.2
  562. Appendix C: Game Design Macro for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (detail) from Figure 18.2
  563. 致谢
  564. Acknowledgments
  565. 参考
  566. References
  567. 指数
  568. Index

图片列表

List of Figures

  1. 图 0.1
  2. Figure 0.1
  3. 趣味制作过程的四个阶段、里程碑和可交付成果。图片来源:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。
  4. The four phases, milestones, and deliverables of the playful production process. Image credit: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, Mattie Rosen, and Richard Lemarchand.
  5. 图 2.1
  6. Figure 2.1
  7. 这是以“冰淇淋”概念为中心的未完成的思维导图。
  8. A work-in-progress mind map centered on the concept of “ice cream.”
  9. 图 4.1
  10. Figure 4.1
  11. Jenny Jiao Hsia 为伦敦维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆的“电子游戏”展览《Consume Me》制作的实物原型。
  12. Jenny Jiao Hsia’s physical prototypes for Consume Me, “Videogames” Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
  13. 图 4.2
  14. Figure 4.2
  15. 数字游戏《Daunting Dollhouse》的实体原型,由 Chao Chen、Christoph Rosenthal、George Li 和 Julian Ceipek 在 USC Games IMGD MFA 课堂上创建。照片来源:George Li。
  16. A physical prototype of a digital game, Daunting Dollhouse, by Chao Chen, Christoph Rosenthal, George Li, and Julian Ceipek created in a USC Games IMGD MFA class. Photo credit: George Li.
  17. 图 7.1
  18. Figure 7.1
  19. 什么是《神秘海域》?(顽皮狗,约 2006 年)。附录 B 中提供了此文本的抄本。图片来源:《神秘海域:德雷克的宝藏》 ™ © 2007 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC。《神秘海域:德雷克的宝藏》是 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC 的商标。由顽皮狗 LLC 创建和开发。
  20. What is Uncharted? (Naughty Dog, circa 2006). A transcription of this text is available in appendix B. Image credit: UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune™ © 2007 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Created and developed by Naughty Dog LLC.
  21. 图 7.2
  22. Figure 7.2
  23. 罗伯特·普拉奇克博士的“情绪之轮”。图片来源:Machine Elf 1735,Wikimedia Commons,公共领域。
  24. Dr. Robert Plutchik’s “wheel of emotions.” Image credit: Machine Elf 1735, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.
  25. 图 8.1
  26. Figure 8.1
  27. 图 10.1
  28. Figure 10.1
  29. 垂直切片。
  30. A vertical slice.
  31. 图 10.2
  32. Figure 10.2
  33. 感知-认知-动作-输入-计算-输出循环。
  34. The perception-cognition-action-input-computation-output loop.
  35. 图 10.3
  36. Figure 10.3
  37. 白板流程图勾勒出《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》开头的游戏玩法和故事情节。图片来源:UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™ © 2009 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC。UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves 是 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC 的商标。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创作和开发。
  38. A whiteboard flowchart sketching out the gameplay and story sequence at the beginning of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Image credit: UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™ © 2009 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.
  39. 图 10.4
  40. Figure 10.4
  41. 白板图展示了我们从流程图到《神秘海域 2:盗贼之王》开头的粗略关卡布局的转变过程,包括平面图和立面图。图片来源:©2009 SIE LLC/《神秘海域 2:盗贼之王》™。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创建和开发。
  42. Whiteboard diagrams showing the way that we moved from flowchart to rough level layout for the beginning of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, in plan view and elevation. Image credit: ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.
  43. 图 10.5
  44. Figure 10.5
  45. 关卡设计和艺术创作的 blockmesh(又称 blockout、whitebox 或 graybox)过程。图片来源:Erick Pangilinan 和 ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创建和开发。
  46. The blockmesh (aka blockout, whitebox, or graybox) process of level design and art creation. Images credit: Erick Pangilinan and ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.
  47. 图 10.6
  48. Figure 10.6
  49. 迈克尔·巴克莱 (Michael Barclay) 的 Twitter 帖子,启动了#blocktober 标签。
  50. Michael Barclay’s Twitter post, which started the #blocktober hashtag.
  51. 图 10.7
  52. Figure 10.7
  53. 一个美丽的角落,可以让您直观地看到完成的游戏关卡是什么样子。
  54. A beautiful corner for visualizing how a completed game level will look.
  55. 图 12.1
  56. Figure 12.1
  57. 控制备忘单。
  58. A controls cheat sheet.
  59. 图 12.2
  60. Figure 12.2
  61. 书面的“提示”或“帮助”。
  62. A written “hint” or “helper.”
  63. 图 13.1
  64. Figure 13.1
  65. 城堡的同心结构。
  66. The concentric structure of a castle.
  67. 图 15.1
  68. Figure 15.1
  69. 尝试开发许多典型的游戏项目。
  70. Attempted developer effort for many typical game projects.
  71. 图 15.2
  72. Figure 15.2
  73. 许多典型游戏项目的实际开发人员成就。
  74. Actual developer accomplishment for many typical game projects.
  75. 图 15.3
  76. Figure 15.3
  77. 对于开发人员来说,这是一种更省力、更省力的方法。
  78. A better way for developers to expend any extra effort.
  79. 图 15.4
  80. Figure 15.4
  81. 开发人员在尝试以更健康的方式工作时可能的努力路径,与有趣的生产过程的主要里程碑相关。
  82. The probable effort path for developers, as they try to work in a healthier way, in relation to the major milestones of the playful production process.
  83. 图 16.1
  84. Figure 16.1
  85. 弗赖塔格金字塔。
  86. Freytag’s Pyramid.
  87. 图 16.2
  88. Figure 16.2
  89. 故事片故事的分形结构。
  90. The fractal structure of a feature film story.
  91. 图 17.1
  92. Figure 17.1
  93. 游戏设计宏图表模板。
  94. A game design macro chart template.
  95. 图 18.1
  96. Figure 18.1
  97. 软木板索引卡规划,最终形成了《神秘海域 2:盗贼同盟》的游戏设计宏图。请注意,在开发阶段,Chloe Frazer 被称为“Jane”。图片来源:©2009 SIE LLC/《神秘海域 2:盗贼同盟》™。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创建和开发。
  98. The cork board index card planning that led to the game design macro chart for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Note that Chloe Frazer was called “Jane” at this stage in development. Image credit: ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.
  99. 图 18.2
  100. Figure 18.2
  101. 《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》游戏设计宏图的一部分(另见附录 C)。图片来源:©2009 SIE LLC/《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》™。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创建和开发。
  102. Part of the game design macro chart for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (see also appendix C). Image credit: ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.
  103. 图 18.3
  104. Figure 18.3
  105. 《超级马里奥兄弟世界 1-1 》开头的设置。图片来源:任天堂。
  106. The setup at the beginning of Super Mario Bros. World 1–1. Image credit: Nintendo.
  107. 图 18.4
  108. Figure 18.4
  109. 在伦敦维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆的“电子游戏”展览中,顽皮狗的《最后生还者》的软木板宏观规划。图片来源:《最后生还者》™ ©2013、2014 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC。《最后生还者》是 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC 的商标。由顽皮狗有限责任公司创作和开发。
  110. Cork board macro planning for Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, in the “Videogames” Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Image credit: The Last of Us™ ©2013, 2014 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. The Last of Us is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.
  111. 图 19.1
  112. Figure 19.1
  113. 简单日程表的开始。
  114. The beginnings of a simple schedule.
  115. 图 19.2
  116. Figure 19.2
  117. 从简单的日程表中划掉任务。
  118. Striking tasks off a simple schedule.
  119. 图 19.3
  120. Figure 19.3
  121. 燃尽图电子表格示例。图片来源:Jeremy Gibson Bond、Richard Lemarchand、Peter Brinson 和 Aaron Cheney。
  122. An example burndown chart spreadsheet. Image credit: Jeremy Gibson Bond, Richard Lemarchand, Peter Brinson, and Aaron Cheney.
  123. 图 19.4
  124. Figure 19.4
  125. 燃尽图信息图示例。图片来源:Jeremy Gibson Bond、Richard Lemarchand、Peter Brinson 和 Aaron Cheney。
  126. An example burndown chart infographic. Image credit: Jeremy Gibson Bond, Richard Lemarchand, Peter Brinson, and Aaron Cheney.
  127. 图 19.5
  128. Figure 19.5
  129. 带注释的燃尽图信息图示例。图片来源:Jeremy Gibson Bond、Richard Lemarchand、Peter Brinson 和 Aaron Cheney。
  130. An example burndown chart infographic, annotated. Image credit: Jeremy Gibson Bond, Richard Lemarchand, Peter Brinson, and Aaron Cheney.
  131. 图 19.6
  132. Figure 19.6
  133. 几天后的同一张燃尽图信息图。图片来源:Jeremy Gibson Bond、Richard Lemarchand、Peter Brinson 和 Aaron Cheney。
  134. The same example burndown chart infographic, a few days later. Image credit: Jeremy Gibson Bond, Richard Lemarchand, Peter Brinson, and Aaron Cheney.
  135. 图 21.1
  136. Figure 21.1
  137. 图 22.1
  138. Figure 22.1
  139. 整个生产阶段及其里程碑。图片来源:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。
  140. The full production phase and its milestones. Image credit: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, Mattie Rosen, and Richard Lemarchand.
  141. 图 22.2
  142. Figure 22.2
  143. 图 24.1 a–d
  144. Figure 24.1 a–d
  145. 图 25.1
  146. Figure 25.1
  147. 图 25.2
  148. Figure 25.2
  149. 图 26.1
  150. Figure 26.1
  151. 表格显示了《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》中可能存在问题的尝试次数,该表格来自正式游戏测试期间从十名玩家收集的指标数据。图片来源:《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》 ™ © 2011 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC。《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》是 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC 的商标。由顽皮狗有限责任公司创建和开发。
  152. A table showing potentially problematic numbers of attempts in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, derived from metrics data gathered from ten players during a formal playtest. Image credit: UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception™ © 2011 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Created and developed by Naughty Dog LLC.
  153. 图 26.2
  154. Figure 26.2
  155. 这张图表显示了《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》中测试人员的进度随时间的变化,该图表来自正式游戏测试期间从九名玩家收集的指标数据。图片来源:《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》 ™/© SIE LLC。由顽皮狗有限责任公司创建和开发。
  156. A graph showing playtester progression over time in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, derived from metrics data gathered from nine players during a formal playtest. Image credit: UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception™/© SIE LLC. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.
  157. 图 26.3
  158. Figure 26.3
  159. 《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》中使用的坏跳系统,显示玩家尝试向上攀爬但失败的位置。图片来源:《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》 ™/© SIE LLC。由顽皮狗有限责任公司创建和开发。
  160. The bad jumps system used for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, showing where players had attempted to climb upward and had failed. Image credit: UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception™/© SIE LLC. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.
  161. 图 27.1
  162. Figure 27.1
  163. 阿尔法阶段和贝塔阶段隐藏在全面生产中。图片来源:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。
  164. The alpha phase and the beta phase tucked away inside full production. Image credit: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, Mattie Rosen, and Richard Lemarchand.
  165. 图 29.1
  166. Figure 29.1
  167. 存根函数。
  168. A stub function.
  169. 图 29.2
  170. Figure 29.2
  171. 电子游戏中的门具有多种不同的形状、大小和行为。
  172. Doors in videogames come in many different shapes, sizes, and behaviors.
  173. 图 29.3
  174. Figure 29.3
  175. 看似坚固的物体“碰撞”(相互渗透)并迅速打破了物体坚固性和真实性的幻觉。图片来源:Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。
  176. Solid-looking objects “crashing” (interpenetrating) and quickly breaking the illusion of the solidity and reality of the objects. Image credit: Mattie Rosen and Richard Lemarchand.
  177. 图 29.4
  178. Figure 29.4
  179. 仔细选择插入式门旋转的枢轴点,以避免发生碰撞问题。
  180. Choose the pivot point that a stubbed-in door rotates around carefully to avoid problems with crashing.
  181. 图 31.1
  182. Figure 31.1
  183. 测试里程碑结束了测试阶段和全面生产。图片来源:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。
  184. The beta milestone ends both the beta phase and full production. Image credit: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, Mattie Rosen, and Richard Lemarchand.
  185. 图 34.1
  186. Figure 34.1
  187. 图 A.1
  188. Figure A.1
  189. 图片来源:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。
  190. Image credit: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, Mattie Rosen, and Richard Lemarchand.
  191. 图 C.1
  192. Figure C.1
  193. 图片来源:©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创作和开发。
  194. Image credit: ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

 

 

前言

Foreword

我很荣幸理查德是我最老的同事和最亲密的朋友之一。

I’m fortunate to count Richard among my oldest colleagues and dearest friends.

我们第一次见面是在 1995 年,当时我加入了 Crystal Dynamics 的设计部​​门,我承认我立刻就迷上了他。他拥有无穷的创造力和幽默感,拥有牛津大学的物理学和哲学学位,他身上有一种既傻乎乎又严肃的东西,我立刻就爱上了他。我知道我想和他一起工作,但没想到我们的第一次相遇会促成一场持续 15 年、制作了 7 款游戏的创意合作,以及一段长达 25 年的友谊。

We first met in 1995 when I joined the design department at Crystal Dynamics, and I’ll confess I instantly had a professional crush on him. Between his boundless creative energy and good humor and his Oxford degree in physics and philosophy, there was something simultaneously silly and serious about him that I immediately adored. I knew I wanted to work with him but had no idea that our first encounter would lead to a creative collaboration encompassing fifteen years and seven games, and a friendship that would span twenty-five years.

那时,我们都是初出茅庐的游戏开发者,经验不足五年,还在摸索中。这个行业也很年轻,游戏设计作为一门学科在很大程度上仍是未知领域(原谅我的双关语)。一路走来,我们犯了很多错误,但正如 Rich 所说,我们学会了“无畏失败”。我担任创意总监,Rich 担任首席设计师,我们在一个又一个项目中采用并发展了本书中概述的许多理念、实践和方法。我们一起学习如何成为游戏设计师和互动故事讲述者。

We were both fledgling game developers at that point, still finding our feet with less than five years’ experience under our belts. The industry was young too, and game design as a discipline was still largely uncharted territory (forgive the pun). We made plenty of mistakes along the way, but as Rich says, we learned to be “fearless about failing.” Project by project, with me in the creative director role and Rich as lead designer, we adopted and developed many of the philosophies, practices, and methods outlined in this book. We learned how to be game designers and interactive storytellers together.

理查德的“如果”心态帮助我摆脱了有时令人难以承受的导演责任范围,而他脚踏实地、务实、有条理、负责任的性格让我在面对上千项任务和艰难决定时保持镇定。事实证明,这种二分法恰恰定义了一名优秀设计师(尤其是担任领导角色的设计师)需要培养的素质。

Richard’s playful “what if” mindset helped me to untether from the sometimes overwhelming scope of directorial responsibility, and his grounded, practical, organized, responsible nature kept me anchored when there were a thousand tasks to keep track of and hard decisions to be made. As it turns out, this dichotomy precisely defines the qualities that a good designer—particularly in a leadership role—needs to develop.

二十年亲身实践、深入游戏开发,加上十年的教学经验,让理查德具备了撰写本书的独特资格和能力。在这些章节中,您将找到大量有用的技术和实用建议,涵盖整个游戏开发过程,从空白页构思到最终产品。

Twenty years of hands-on, in-the-trenches game development, coupled with a decade of teaching experience, make Richard uniquely qualified and equipped to write this book. Inside these chapters, you’ll find a treasure trove of useful techniques and practical advice on the whole arc of game development, from blank-page ideation to the final product.

我认为,更重要的是 Rich 所描述的通过经验培养出来的协作和沟通“软技能”:

Even more important, I think, are the “soft skills” of collaboration and communication that Rich describes, cultivated by experience:

好奇心— 深入研究的好奇心和将来自不同来源(音乐、艺术、文学、漫画、电影、历史)的灵感融入游戏设计的能力。

Curiosity—the inquisitive urge to dive into research and the ability to blend inspirations from disparate sources (music, art, literature, comics, movies, history) into your game design.

灵活性— 理解游戏开发是一种可控的混乱,是一种从始至终持续的相互信任的行为,要求我们具有适应性、协作性、整体性的思考能力。

Flexibility—the understanding that game development is controlled chaos, a sustained act of mutual faith from beginning to end that requires us to be adaptable, collaborative, holistic thinkers.

慷慨—意识到当设计围绕每个人的贡献而进行时,我们会做得最好,我们的手艺本质上是即兴的,当我们互相“同意”时,我们会“增加”想法。即使最终结果有点不尽如人意,但最好还是有每个人的指纹在上面。

Generosity—the awareness that we do our best work when the design flows around everyone’s contributions, that our craft is improvisational by nature, and that we “plus” ideas when we “yes, and” each other. Even if the final result is a little jangly, it’s better for having everyone’s fingerprints on it.

谦逊— 知道轻手轻脚是最好的力量,领导力不是夺取控制权,而是放弃控制权以赋予他人权力。权威不是人为赋予的;它必须每天从团队中赢得。

Humility—the strength to know that a light hand on the reins is best, and that leadership is not about taking control but giving up control to empower others. The mantle of authority cannot be artificially bestowed; it must be earned from the team every day.

尊重—认识到任何合作努力都是健康冲突和富有成效的辩论的熔炉,这需要坦诚和信任的氛围。

Respect—the recognition that any collaborative endeavor is a crucible of healthy conflict and productive debate, which requires a climate of candor and trust.

这是里奇在其职业生涯中培养和磨练的精神,也是他每天与同事、学生和朋友相处时所展现的品质。

This is the ethos that Rich has developed and honed over his career and the qualities he demonstrates every day with his colleagues, students, and friends.

我知道读者会喜欢在这本书的各章中与理查德共度时光,就像我多年来喜欢认识他一样,并且会像与他一起工作一样收获颇丰。里奇的智慧和性格——他的热情、体贴、善良以及他作为领导者和老师的耐心——在每一页的文字中闪耀着光芒。

I know that readers will enjoy spending time with Richard in the chapters of this book as much as I’ve enjoyed knowing him over the years and will gain as much as I did working alongside him. Rich’s wisdom and character—his enthusiasm, thoughtfulness, kindness, and his patience as a leader and a teacher—shine through the words on every page.

艾米·亨尼格

Amy Hennig

新媒体部总裁

President, New Media Division

天舞传媒

Skydance Media

 

 

介绍

Introduction

我们必须集中注意力,因为意外总是会发生。

—查尔斯·巴克斯特,《爱的盛宴》

We must collect our thoughts, for the unexpected is always upon us.

—Charles Baxter, The Feast of Love

制作游戏很难。我们面临的问题,无论是创意问题还是技术问题,往往看起来都无法解决。游戏开发中的所有事情都比你想象的要花费更长的时间。然后,就在你掌握了游戏的窍门时,又有新的事情发生,打乱了你的计划。如果你放任不管,游戏开发就会把你搞得一团糟,让你精疲力竭。

Making games is hard. The problems we face, both creative and technical, often seem impossible to solve. Everything in game development takes much longer than you think it’s going to. Then just when you’ve got a handle on your game, something new comes along to derail your plans. If you let it, game development will mess you up and burn you out.

富有创造力的人通常在孩童时期就开始学习如何制作东西,通常是通过反复试验,利用孩子纯粹的想象力和好奇心。随着年龄的增长,我们可能会学到一些艺术技巧——如何给画作着色,如何吹单簧管,或者如何在车床上车削木头时握住凿子。但很可能没有人教过我们关于创造过程的元结构:如何管理我们的时间和计划我们的项目。

Creative people usually start learning how to make things when they’re kids, often by trial and error, using the undiluted powers of a child’s imagination and curiosity. As we get older, we probably get taught some artistic technique—how to shade a drawing, how to blow into a clarinet, or how to hold a chisel while we’re turning wood on a lathe. But it’s likely that no one ever teaches us about the metastructure of the creative process: how to manage our time and plan our projects.

在我们青少年时期,许多人都会采取一种自然的方式来努力使工作变得出色:我们只是投入了更多的时间。我们在作业截止前一天晚上熬夜。也许我们整晚不睡。我们衣衫褴褛、精疲力竭地来到课堂,希望完成作业,但却太累了,无法清醒地回答有关作业的问题。等到我们成年时,这些部分成功但相当不正常的工作方式已经成为根深蒂固的习惯,如果我们不小心,我们就会把它们带到我们所做的每一件事上。如果我们成为游戏开发者,我们就会把它们带到游戏开发中。很长一段时间以来,我认为制作一款优秀游戏的道路不可避免地意味着很多个深夜、很多咖啡,以及将生活中的一切(工作除外)搁置,以备项目的最后几个月。

In our teenage years, many of us adopt the natural way of trying to make our work excellent: we just put more time into it. We stay up late the night before an assignment is due. Maybe we stay up all night. We show up for class bedraggled and exhausted, hopefully with a completed assignment but too tired to answer questions about it with a clear mind. By the time we become adults, these partially successful but pretty dysfunctional ways of working have become deeply ingrained habits, and if we’re not careful, we bring them to everything we do. If we become game developers, we bring them to game development. For a long time, I thought that the path to an excellent game inevitably meant lots of late nights, lots of coffee, and putting everything in your life—apart from work—on hold for the last few months of a project.

好消息是,这些都不是真的。你可以改掉这些坏习惯。在我的职业生涯中,我学会了如何确保自己在不浪费时间的情况下完成高质量的工作——也不必熬夜。

The good news is that none of that is true. You can unlearn those bad habits. Over the course of my career, I learned how to ensure that I made great-quality work without running out of time—and without having to stay up all night.

我叫 Richard Lemarchand,是一名游戏设计师。我在电子游戏行业的主流行业工作了二十多年,在英国的 MicroProse 开始了我的职业生涯,在那里我成为了该公司成立团队的初级成员主机游戏部门。20 世纪 90 年代中期,我搬到加州,在 Crystal Dynamics 工作,参与了游戏系列GexPandemonium!Soul Reaver的制作。我仍然衷心感谢我的导师、队友和在 MicroProse 和 Crystal 的朋友教给我的一切。2004 年至 2012 年期间,我在圣莫尼卡顽皮狗担任游戏设计师。我帮助完成了Jak 3,然后成为Jak X: Combat Racing的首席游戏设计师。之后,我领导或共同领导了神秘海域系列所有三款 PlayStation 3 游戏的设计。神秘海域 2:纵横四海成为顽皮狗的巨大成功,赢得了十项 AIAS 互动成就奖、五项游戏开发者选择奖、四项 BAFTA 奖和两百多个年度游戏奖。我们在顽皮狗共同完成的工作证明了这些团队的智慧、勇气和幽默感。

My name is Richard Lemarchand, and I’m a game designer. I worked in the mainstream of the videogame industry for over twenty years and got my start at MicroProse in the UK, where I became a junior member of the group that founded the company’s console game division. I moved to California in the mid-1990s to work at Crystal Dynamics, where I was involved in creating the game series Gex, Pandemonium!, and Soul Reaver. I remain passionately grateful for everything my mentors, teammates, and friends at MicroProse and Crystal taught me. Between 2004 and 2012, I was a game designer at Naughty Dog in Santa Monica. I helped to finish Jak 3, before becoming lead game designer on Jak X: Combat Racing. I then led or co-led the design of all three PlayStation 3 games in the Uncharted series. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves became a huge success for Naughty Dog, winning ten AIAS Interactive Achievement Awards, five Game Developers Choice Awards, four BAFTAs, and more than two hundred Game of the Year awards. The work that we did together at Naughty Dog is a testament to the wisdom, courage, and playfulness of those teams.

2005 年,我开始在南加州大学做演讲,并指导游戏专业的学生。这些经历,加上独立游戏界的兴起,促使我思考如何花更多时间从艺术和文化、研究和批评、影响和教育的角度看待游戏。我获得了南加州大学电影艺术学院的职位,并于 2012 年离开顽皮狗加入南加州大学。从那时起,我就一直在南加州大学游戏学院才华横溢的教职员工和学生中教授和制作游戏。

In 2005, I began giving talks and mentoring games students at the University of Southern California. These experiences, along with the arrival of the indie games scene, prompted me to think about how I could spend more time looking at games through the lenses of art and culture, research and criticism, impact and education. I was offered a position at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, and I left Naughty Dog to join USC in 2012. I have been teaching and making games among the talented faculty, staff, and students of USC Games ever since.

本书以我整个行业生涯中学到的东西为基础,并以我几乎每学期都会讲授的中级设计和开发课程为基础。我的课程旨在帮助那些不再是游戏设计实践初学者但还不是专家的学生。这是一门关于游戏设计和游戏制作的课程,在我看来,这两个方面密不可分。游戏设计是提出游戏创意,然后将其付诸实践的过程;你可以将游戏制作视为“项目管理”,确保游戏制作过程中一切顺利进行。设计和制作是同一枚硬币的两面——它们有不同的面,但你不能只拥有其中一面而没有另一面。为什么不尝试将这两个学科更紧密地结合在一起呢?毕竟,它们有着相同的目标:制作一款出色的游戏。

This book is rooted in the things I learned throughout my industry career and is based on an intermediate design and development class that I teach almost every semester. My class is designed to help students who are no longer beginners in their game design practice but who are not yet experts. It’s a class in both game design and game production, two things I see as inexorably intertwined. Game design is the process of coming up with ideas for a game and then making them work in gameplay; you can think of game production as “project management,” ensuring that things run smoothly as the game gets built. Design and production are two sides of the same coin—they have different faces, but you can’t have one without the other. Why not try to bring these two disciplines closer together? After all, they share the same goal: to make an excellent game.

当我加入游戏行业时,我们的所有实践和流程都还处于起步阶段。我们尽了最大努力来组织我们的工作,但犯了很多错误。随着时间的推移,我们分阶段学习,首先弄清楚了前期制作的重要性及其与完整制作的区别,然后意识到后期制作的重要性。最后,我们意识到我们错过了第一步:我们可以从游戏学术界和其他成熟设计学科使用的构思过程中学到一些东西。这四个项目阶段——构思预生产全面生产, 和后期制作——将为我们提供从初露锋芒到最终成果的路标。您可以在图 0.1中看到它们。

When I joined the game industry, all of our practices and processes were still in their infancy. We did our best to structure our work but made a lot of mistakes. As time passed, we learned in stages, first figuring out the importance of preproduction and its differences from full production, then realizing the importance of postproduction. Finally, we recognized that we were missing out on the very first step: we had something to learn from the ideation processes used in games academia and in other mature design disciplines. These four project phases—ideation, preproduction, full production, and postproduction—are going to give us the roadside markers we need to chart a course on a journey from first glimmerings to finished game. You can see them in figure 0.1.

图 0.1

Figure 0.1

趣味制作过程的四个阶段、里程碑和可交付成果。图片来源:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。

The four phases, milestones, and deliverables of the playful production process. Image credit: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, Mattie Rosen, and Richard Lemarchand.

想象力和设计紧密相连。我们日夜梦想的成果可以成就艺术和文学、科学和技术、工业和娱乐领域最伟大的成就。但直到我们做出决定并付诸行动,我们才算设计,而只是在推测。此外,游戏设计和交互设计在某些重要方面,设计与创作过程有着根本区别。我们制作的东西是互动的、动态系统的,这给创作过程带来了大量未知数、变量、挑战和问题。我们如何才能控制设计过程,确保在正确的时间做出正确的决定?本书将向您展示如何做到这一点。

Imagination and design are closely connected. The dreams we dream at night and by day can lead to the greatest accomplishments in art and literature, science and technology, industry and entertainment. But until we make decisions and act upon them, we are not designing, only speculating. Furthermore, game design and interaction design are fundamentally different from other processes of media design and creation in some important regards. The things we make are interactive and dynamically systemic, and that introduces a vast number of unknowns, variables, challenges, and problems into the creative process. How can we stay in control of the design process, ensuring that we make the right decisions at the right time? This book will show you how.

游戏行业一直受到“加班”问题的困扰,即不受控制的过度劳累,这会损害个人、社区、组织和游戏的利益。本书将帮助你解决或避免这个问题。需要说明的是:我喜欢努力工作,并且我相信创造卓越通常需要在某些时候付出一些额外的努力。但是努力工作和加班是有区别的。如果你以可控的方式工作,给自己时间在额外努力之间恢复精力,那么努力工作是可持续的。加班是不可持续的。它会使人精疲力竭,让他们错过家人和朋友生活中的重要事件,并且对于很大一部分受此影响的游戏开发者来说,这会导致他们离开游戏行业,带走他们来之不易的智慧和经验。

The game industry has always been plagued by the problem of “crunch,” uncontrolled overwork that harms individuals, communities, organizations, and games. This book will help you address or avoid this problem. To be clear: I like hard work, and I believe that creating excellence usually involves some extra effort at some point. But there’s a difference between hard work and crunch. Hard work is sustainable if you do it in a controlled way, giving yourself time to recharge between times of extra effort. Crunch is not sustainable. It burns people out, makes them miss important events in the lives of their family and friends, and, for a huge proportion of the game developers affected by it, causes them to leave the game industry, taking with them all their hard-won wisdom and experience.

当面临组织或改进创意方法的挑战时,有些人会以创意本质上混乱的性质为借口,避免控制自己的创作过程。确实,很多创意都是混乱的。但是,虽然必须尊重这种混乱,但也可以借助正确的工具加以利用和组织,从而养成良好的工作习惯,为我们的项目取得最佳成果。我们大多数人将在整个创作生活中与坏习惯和障碍作斗争;这完全正常。如果你对现状感到满意,现在就合上这本书。如果你想释放更多自己的游戏制作能力,那就继续阅读。真正的学习几乎总是伴随着挣扎,所以准备好迎接一些成长的烦恼吧。以适合你的方式使用这本书,摆脱不再对你有益的旧习惯,养成新习惯,帮助你成为你想成为的那种有创造力的人。

When challenged to organize or improve their creative methods, some people use the essentially chaotic nature of creativity as an excuse to avoid taking control of their process. It’s true: a lot of creativity is chaotic. But that chaos, while it must be respected, can also be harnessed and organized with the right tools to create good working habits and the best possible outcomes for our projects. Most of us will struggle with our bad habits and blockages for the whole of our creative lives; that’s perfectly normal. If you are content with the status quo, close this book now. If you want to unlock more of your own game-making ability, then keep reading. True learning almost always comes with a struggle, so get ready for a few growing pains. Use this book in a way that makes sense for you, to get rid of whatever old habits aren’t serving you well anymore and to pick up new habits that will help you become the kind of creative person you want to be.

本书将帮助您获得有关游戏设计、制作和实施的新技能,这些技能将帮助您以更高的效率、更多的创造力和更少的痛苦构思和创建未来的项目。它将帮助您找到制作精彩游戏和交互式媒体的新方法,同时保持您的身体和心理健康和队友的心理健康。我希望这本书对相关​​领域的人士也有用:交互设计师、体验设计师、当代艺术家以及主题公园、VR 和剧院的沉浸式设计师。所有这些从业者都面临着与游戏设计师相同的挑战——设计完全原创和创新的参与式体验,使用他们自己发明的设计模式和工具。事实上,本书中的技巧和技术可以应用于几乎任何领域的任何复杂设计过程。

This book will help you acquire new skills around game design, production, and implementation, skills that will help you conceptualize and create your future projects with greater efficiency, more creativity. and less pain. It will help you find new ways to make great games and interactive media while preserving your physical and psychological well-being and that of your teammates. I hope it will also be useful to people from related disciplines: interaction designers, experience designers, contemporary artists, and immersive designers for theme parks, VR, and theater. All these practitioners struggle with the same challenges that game designers do—devising entirely original and innovative participatory experiences, using design patterns and tools that they themselves are inventing. Indeed, the skills and techniques in this book could be applied to any complex design process in almost any field.

设计和制作是创意过程的一部分,在这个过程中,客观事实、分析和理性与经验、艺术和观众的主观判断相遇。当我们努力创造伟大的事物时,承认创意愿景、价值观和目标对项目的重要性是有价值的。同时,我们需要协调创意人士对卓越和创新的渴望与时间和金钱的实际限制。

Design and production are aspects of the creative process where objective facts, analysis, and rationality meet the subjective judgments of experience, art, and audience. When we’re striving to make something great, it’s valuable to acknowledge the importance of the creative vision, values, and goals driving a project. At the same time, we need to reconcile creative people’s aspirations toward excellence and innovation with the practical constraints of time and money.

我们还需要协作和沟通的“软技能”。如果你的队友和合作者对项目、彼此或你感觉不好,那么擅长设计和制作游戏是不够的。这可能是任何协作创意实践中最具挑战性的部分,本书将为你提供一些关于如何良好沟通和协作的实用建议。

We also need “soft skills” of collaboration and communication. It’s not enough to be good at designing and making games if your teammates and collaborators feel bad about the project, each other, or you. This is probably the most challenging part of any collaborative creative practice, and this book will give you some practical advice about how to communicate and collaborate well.

我是从一个和我一样具有特定创意背景的人的角度来写这本书的,我从事的是讲故事角色动作电子游戏设计。但我试图使用能够承认游戏设计、交互式媒体设计及其所有相关艺术形式中流派和风格的多样性的语言。通过这样做,我希望以一种对每个人、每个学科和每个团队都有用的方式将设计和制作的艺术和实践结合在一起。我的目标是帮助您在工作中达到比以前更高的卓越标准,并且不会让您精疲力竭。如果我能做好我的工作,您将事半功倍,工作更聪明,而不是更努力。

I’ve written this book from the point of view of someone with my particular creative background, working in storytelling character-action videogame design. But I’ve tried to use language that acknowledges the incredible diversity of genres and styles that we see in game design, interactive media design, and all their adjacent art forms. In doing so, I hope to draw together the art and practice of design and production in a way that is useful to everyone, from every discipline and on every team. It’s my goal to help you meet even higher standards of excellence in your work than you have reached before and to do so without burning out. If I do my job well, you will achieve more with less wasted effort, working smarter, not harder.

使用本书,你将使用以游戏为中心南加州大学游戏项目中使用的流程,由 Tracy Fullerton 在她的书《游戏设计工作坊:以游戏为中心的创新游戏创作方法》描述。1您将在决策、实施、游戏测试和设计修订的循环中反复进行设计。您将了解设想和完善一组项目目标在项目进行过程中。

Using this book, you will design and create games using the playcentric process used in the USC Games program and described by Tracy Fullerton in her book Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games.1 You will design iteratively in a cycle of decision-making, implementation, playtesting, and design revision. You will learn what it means to envision and refine a set of project goals over the course of a project.

您将学习基于以下方面的设计和生产方法“方法”顽皮狗和 Insomniac 等工作室也采用了这种风格,其中还融入了敏捷开发. 你将使用以下方式捕捉你的想法蓝天思维研究. 你将实现里程碑,交付垂直切片, A游戏设计宏,以及日程. 你将学习如何以及何时范围以可靠的方式完成您的项目,从而实现高质量水平。您将带领您的项目通过α 和 beta 阶段并创建与每个项目相关的可交付成果。最终,您将了解完成游戏或任何类型的交互式项目需要什么。

You will learn a design and production methodology based on the “Method” used at studios like Naughty Dog and Insomniac, which also incorporates attitudes and elements from agile development. You’ll capture your ideas using blue sky thinking and research. You’ll meet milestones where you deliver a vertical slice, a game design macro, and a schedule. You will learn how and when to scope your project in a way that reliably results in a high level of quality. You’ll take your project through alpha and beta phases, and create deliverables related to each. Ultimately, you’ll learn what it takes to finish a game—or any kind of interactive project.

在整本书中,你会发现对三个概念的引用,我认为这是健康游戏开发实践的核心:尊重、信任和同意。尊重了解并尊重他人的想法、感受、愿望和权利,重视他们的生活经历、他们的能动性和他们的自主权。尊重同事很重要,尊重玩我们游戏的人也很重要。相信当我们知道别人尊重我们时,信任自然而然就会产生。队友和专业同行之间的信任使得我们共同完成艰难的工作成为可能,我们可以互相依靠,以一种帮助和支持我们努力中每个人的方式分享我们的工作。信任在游戏开发者和他们的受众之间的关系中也很重要。同意在我们旅程的每个阶段,这一点都至关重要。我们必须确保与我们互动的人是自愿的,有人同意在我们的团队工作一段时间,我们的玩家同意看到我们的游戏向他们展示的内容。尊重、信任和同意是社区的基础,而社区是游戏的创造和游戏的基础。

Throughout the book, you will find references to three concepts that I believe lie at the heart of healthy game development practice: respect, trust, and consent. Respect has awareness of and regard for the thoughts, feelings, wishes, and rights of others, valuing their lived experience, their agency, and their autonomy. It’s important that we respect our colleagues, and it’s important that we respect the people who play our games. Trust follows naturally when we learn that others respect us. It’s trust between teammates and professional peers that makes the difficult work we do together possible, when we can count on each other to share in our work in a way that helps and supports everyone in our endeavor. Trust is also important in the relationship between game developers and their audiences. Consent is crucial at every stage of our journey. We must ensure that the people who interact with us do so willingly, that someone consents to work on our team for a certain amount of time, and our players consent to see what our game has to show them. Respect, trust, and consent are the foundations of community, and communities are what make and play games.

我预计,第一次使用本书时,事情不会完美,这没关系。我们都容易忽略重要的事情,重蹈旧辙,或者只是运气不好。重要的是尝试一些新的流程、工具和结构,探索新的工作方式,为你的创造力和生活带来积极而持久的变化。我在这里描述的方法是过去几十年游戏设计的最佳实践的集合。我相信未来几年会给我们带来更好的技术。也许你会成为这种演变的一部分。

I anticipate that the first time you use this book, things won’t go perfectly, and that’s okay. We are all prone to overlooking important things, slipping back into old habits, and just falling afoul of bad luck. What’s important is to try some new processes, tools, and structures, to explore new ways of working, to create positive and lasting change in your creativity and your life. The methods I describe here are a collection of best practices from the past few decades of game design. I’m sure that the coming years will bring us even better techniques. Maybe you will be a part of that evolution.

如果你在游戏行业工作过一段时间,你可能会发现我在这本书中所说的内容对游戏开发过程提出了一种略显理想化的观点。我对此并不介意。游戏开发就像生活一样,很混乱。我经历过理想与现实相撞的循环。但一次又一次,我发现有些人能够实现别人认为不切实际的理想。通过这样做,他们能够创造出以前认为不可能实现的美妙新事物。理想主义是有价值的:它是我们让世界变得更美好的一部分。当理想主义与经验相遇时,智慧就诞生了。

If you’ve spent some time in the game industry, you might find that what I have to say in this book presents a slightly idealized view of the game development process. I’m fine with that. Game development, like life, is messy. I’ve been through the cycle of having my ideals crash into the realities of the world. But time and again, I discovered communities of people who were able to live up to ideals that others said were unrealistic. In doing so, they were able to create wonderful new things previously thought impossible. Idealism is valuable: it’s part of how we make the world better. Where idealism meets experience, wisdom is born.

  1. 1 . Fullerton,游戏设计工作室,第 4 版,12。

  2. 1.  Fullerton, Game Design Workshop, 4th ed., 12.

 

 

第一阶段:构思——提出想法

Phase One: Ideation—Making Ideas

 

 

1 如何开始

1    How to Begin

在我从事游戏行业期间,我有一种感觉,在项目开始时,在预制作之前,有一个特殊的阶段,我们开始弄清楚要制作什么样的游戏。当我加入南加州大学游戏项目时,我从特雷西·富勒顿教授那里了解到这个阶段的名称:它被称为构思,它是平面设计和工业设计等领域设计过程的一个长期组成部分。

Throughout my time in the game industry, I had a feeling that there is a special phase right at the start of a project, before preproduction, where we begin to figure out what kind of game we’re going to make. When I joined the USC Games program, I learned the name of this phase from Professor Tracy Fullerton: it’s called ideation, and it’s a long-standing part of the design process in fields like graphic design and industrial design.

在她的书《游戏设计研讨会:以游戏为中心的创新游戏创作方法》中,Tracy 建议我们从确定“玩家体验目标”开始我们的设计过程。她说:

In her book Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Tracy suggests that we begin our design process by deciding on the “player experience goals.” She says:

玩家体验目标顾名思义就是游戏设计师为玩家在游戏过程中将获得的体验类型设定的目标。这些不是游戏的功能,而是对玩家将发现自己身处的有趣和独特情况的描述。1

Player experience goals are just what they sound like: goals that the game designer sets for the type of experience that players will have during the game. These are not features of the game but rather descriptions of the interesting and unique situations in which you hope players will find themselves.1

在构思阶段,我们将确定要设定的体验目标,以及游戏的其他一些方面。总而言之,我们将这些称为项目目标。

During the ideation phase, we are going to figure out what experience goals to set, along with some other things about our game. Taken together, we’ll call these our project goals.

我参与过的一些项目是续集,我们大概已经知道要制作什么样的游戏了。但是当我们从头开始时该怎么办呢?我们如何克服著名的“白纸”问题,即我们被太多的选择弄得不知所措,因为我们可以做任何事情,所以我们无法决定做任何事情?

Some of the projects I’ve worked on have been sequels, where we already knew roughly what kind of game we were going to make. But what about when we’re starting from scratch? How do we overcome the famous “blank sheet of paper” problem, where we’re paralyzed by overwhelming choice, and because we could do anything, we can’t decide to do anything?

解决白纸问题的正确方法是停止思考大局。​​把完成项目的想法从你的脑海中移除——它太大了,暂时无法解决——然后从以下三种创意活动之一开始:

The right way to tackle the blank-sheet-of-paper problem is to stop thinking about the big picture. Remove the idea of the finished project from your mind—it’s too big to grapple with yet—and start with one of these three types of ideation activity:

  • 蓝天思维(提出想法)
  • Blue sky thinking (coming up with ideas)
  • 研究(在书籍和互联网上挖掘想法)
  • Research (digging for ideas in books and on the Internet)
  • 原型设计(构建简单的东西来玩和评估)
  • Prototyping (building simple things to play with and evaluate)

我们将在接下来的几章中详细讨论这些活动。一旦你开始着手项目的一小部分,你就会发现自己在整体上取得了快速进展。

We’ll look at these activities in detail in the next few chapters. As soon as you start to tackle one small part of the project, you will find yourself making rapid progress with the big picture.

在构思阶段,我们将确定一、二或三件能让我们的游戏独一无二、与众不同的东西。当我们有了一些创意方向来指导我们进行流程的下一阶段时,我们将准备好设定项目目标来标记构思阶段的结束。项目目标将是具体的,这样我们就会有一个方向,但它们也将是开放的,以便在我们前进的过程中给我们提供回旋余地。我们将在第 7 章“项目目标”中仔细讨论这一点。

In the ideation phase, we will define the one, two, or three things that will make our game unique and distinctive. When we have some creative direction to guide us in the next part of the process, we’ll be ready to set project goals to mark the end of the ideation phase. The project goals will be specific so we have direction, but they’ll also be open-ended to give us room to maneuver as we move forward. We’ll look at this closely in chapter 7, “Project Goals.”

我们还将在第 6 章中花一些时间讨论“沟通作为游戏设计技能”。沟通是营造尊重、信任和同意的团队环境的基石,有助于我们成为更好的合作者和创意领导者。

We’re also going to spend some time in chapter 6 looking at “Communication as a Game Design Skill.” Communication is the cornerstone of creating an environment of respect, trust, and consent on our teams and helps us to become better collaborators and creative leaders.

您会注意到本书中引用了其他章节,包括您尚未阅读的后续章节。别担心——您无需跳过前面的内容即可理解当前正在阅读的部分。本书的结构旨在按良好的顺序介绍内容。如果您对某个特定主题感兴趣,或者您想了解流程的不同部分如何组合在一起,这些联系旨在为您提供帮助。

You’ll notice references to other chapters throughout this book, including chapters later in the book that you haven’t read yet. Don’t worry—you don’t need to jump ahead to be able to understand the part you’re currently reading. The book is structured to introduce things in a good order. These connections are intended to help you if you are interested in a particular subject or if you’re trying to understand how different parts of the process fit together.

你可以在一张白纸上画个记号,让白纸不再是空白的。然后你可以把那张涂鸦变成一幅优秀的画。让我们开始吧。

You can stop a blank sheet of paper from being blank by scribbling a mark on it. Then you can turn that scribble into an excellent drawing. Let’s get started.

  1. 1 . Fullerton,游戏设计工作室,第 4 版,12。

  2. 1.  Fullerton, Game Design Workshop, 4th ed., 12.

 

 

2 蓝天思维

2    Blue Sky Thinking

“蓝天思维”是指我们可以用来想出各种想法的活动,这些想法似乎是凭空而来的,没有限制。蓝天思维可以是自发的、即兴的思考或演讲——写下或说出你脑海中浮现的第一件事——也可以是更有条理和更有条理的。无论哪种情况,它都是关于摆脱已知和熟悉的事物,进入一个充满新奇和创新想法的境界。

“Blue sky thinking” refers to activities we can use to come up with ideas, seemingly from nowhere and without limits. Blue sky thinking can involve spontaneous and improvisational thought or speech—writing down or saying the first thing that comes into your head—or it can be more structured and methodical. In either case, it’s about getting away from the known and the familiar and into a realm of new and innovative ideas.

在本章中,我将快速向您介绍我最喜欢的蓝天思维活动:头脑风暴、思维导图和自动化。这些活动可以帮助我们在白纸上做个标记,为我们的游戏设计提供一个起点。

In this chapter, I’ll quickly tell you about my favorite blue sky thinking activities: brainstorming, mind maps, and automatism. These activities can help us make a mark on the blank sheet of paper, to give us a starting point for the design of our game.

头脑风暴

Brainstorming

头脑风暴是团体或个人的一种活动,我们会自发地提出想法并写下来。它有助于快速生成长长的想法清单,还可以帮助团队成员相互了解和理解。

Brainstorming is an activity for groups or individuals where we come up with ideas spontaneously and write them down. It’s good for generating long lists of ideas very quickly and can also help members of a team get to know and understand one another.

当我们严格遵循一小段规则时,头脑风暴的效果最好。你可以在网上找到这些规则的各种版本,但以下是我最喜欢的一套:

Brainstorming works best when we closely follow a short list of rules. You’ll find various versions of these rules online, but here is my favorite set:

  • 设定时间限制新手头脑风暴者经常会忽略这一关键规则。头脑风暴时间短时效果最好。20 分钟迫使每个人都快速工作,30 分钟是最佳上限。如果你能顺利完成任务,那就坚持更长时间。头脑风暴中的时间压力有多种好处,包括帮助你专注于下一个最重要的规则……
  • Set a time limit. Rookie brainstormers often overlook this crucial rule. Brainstorms work best when they’re short. Twenty minutes forces everyone to work fast, and thirty minutes is a good maximum. If you get on a roll, go longer. Time pressure in a brainstorm pays off in multiple ways, including helping you focus on the next most important rule
  • 注重数量而非质量。在头脑风暴中,你并不是想想出正确的想法或最好的想法。你只是试图捕捉所有的想法。稍后你会选出最好的。鼓励每个人说出他们脑海中浮现的第一件事。如果你的团队喜欢竞争,那就设定一个目标,想出比你以前想出的更多的想法。然而,如果你不这样做,这可能会陷入混乱……
  • Focus on quantity over quality. You’re not trying to come up with the right idea or the best idea during a brainstorm. You’re just trying to capture all the ideas. You’ll pick the best ones later. Encourage everyone to say the first thing that comes into their mind. If your team likes competition, set a goal to come up with more ideas than you’ve ever come up with before. However, this could descend into chaos if you don’t
  • 任命一名主持人让小组中的一名成员负责。他们将负责推动事情的发展,贡献想法以启动头脑风暴,并确保……
  • Appoint a facilitator. Put one member of the group in charge. They will be tasked with moving things along, contributing ideas to get the brainstorm started, and making sure that
  • 每次只有一个人说话。这可以让会议保持活力,而不会变得混乱,并让团队成员有机会展示对彼此的尊重,建立信任。主持人还应确保……
  • Only one person speaks at a time. This keeps the session energetic without becoming chaotic and gives the team members a chance to demonstrate respect for each other, developing trust. The facilitator should also make sure that
  • 每个人都有发言的机会团队中的每个人都可以提出好的想法,但有些人可能不愿意发言。优秀的主持人会注意到有人想发言但难以加入对话,并为他们的声音留出空间。主持人或团队中的其他人也应该负责……
  • Everyone gets a chance to speak. Good ideas can come from everyone on the team, but some people might be reluctant to speak up. A good facilitator will notice when someone wants to contribute but is having trouble jumping into the conversation and will make and hold space for their voice. The facilitator or someone else on the team should also be tasked to
  • 把一切都写下来. 记录所有想法。将想法写在白板上让每个人都能看到,这很好,但共享在线文档或写在笔记本上也是可以的。每一个想法都值得记录下来,无论它看起来多么明显或奇怪。
  • Write everything down. Capture all the ideas. Writing the ideas on a whiteboard where everyone can see them is good, but a shared online document or writing in a notebook is fine too. Every last idea is worthy of being recorded, no matter how obvious or weird it seems.
  • 欢迎不同寻常的想法——越奇怪越好。这条规则是对“注重数量而不是质量”的补充。在头脑风暴中,我们试图摆脱熟悉的事物,进入新的领域。一个看似不可行、奇怪的想法后来可能会成为绝妙创意和创新的源泉。主持人应该定期提醒每个人这条规则,以帮助打破我们对说一些看起来愚蠢或奇怪的话的社会抵触情绪。
  • Welcome unusual ideas—the weirder the better. This rule complements “focus on quantity over quality.” In a brainstorm, we’re trying to get away from the familiar and into fresh territory. An idea that seems unworkably strange could later prove to be a source of brilliant originality and innovation. The facilitator should regularly remind everyone about this rule, to help break down the social resistance that we all have to saying things that seem silly or odd.
  • 说“是的,而且”——结合并改进想法。这是一种让事情继续进行的好方法——尤其是当你的大脑一片空白的时候。使用即兴喜剧和戏剧中的“是的,而且”技巧,通过采用先前的一个想法并对其进行添加或修改。
  • Say “yes, and”—combine and improve ideas. This is a great way to keep things moving along—especially when your mind goes blank. Use the “yes, and” technique from improv comedy and theater, by taking one of the earlier ideas and adding to it or modifying it.
  • 不要在头脑风暴期间讨论想法。对于游戏设计师等善于分析的人来说,这条规则通常很难遵守。我们都想在听到想法后立即开始分析,看看它们是否有用。不要在头脑风暴期间这样做。讨论的时间稍后再说。现在,记住时间限制,专注于产生尽可能多的新想法。
  • Don’t discuss the ideas during the brainstorm. This rule is often very hard for analytical people like game designers to follow. We all want to start dissecting ideas as soon as we hear them, to see if they’re any good. Don’t do this during the brainstorm. The time for discussion comes later. For now, remember the time limit and focus on generating as many new ideas as possible.

评估头脑风暴结果

Evaluating Brainstorm Results

头脑风暴结束后,留出一些时间整理您收集到的想法,并开始通过热烈的讨论和辩论来评估它们。从我自己的经验中我知道,人们经常进行头脑风暴,然后再也不看结果。相反,他们会被记忆中随机出现的想法所困扰。将头脑风暴变成强大的项目创意就像淘金一样——需要时间和注意力。

After the brainstorm, set some time aside to sort through the ideas you captured and begin to evaluate them with lively discussion and debate. I know from my own experience that people often brainstorm and then never look at the results again. Instead, they get stuck on whatever ideas randomly lodged in their memory. Turning a brainstorm into a strong project idea is just like panning for gold—it takes time and attention.

与队友讨论这些想法,并使用适合您和您的团队的任何标准来审查每个想法。您可能特别热衷于寻找新的游戏风格或游戏叙事设计的新主题。您可能为您的项目设定了一个特定的影响目标,或者有一套想要采纳的技术考虑因素。继续寻找看似毫无关联的想法的新颖而有趣的组合。

Talk over the ideas with your teammates and review each one using whatever criteria are appropriate for you and your team. You might be particularly keen to find new styles of gameplay or new subjects for the narrative design of your game. You might have a particular impact goal in mind for your project or have a set of technical considerations that you want to embrace. Continue to look for new and interesting combinations of seemingly unconnected ideas.

有些人发现,给自己的想法分配优先级很有用。将想法复制到电子表格中,每行一个想法。在想法旁边的一列中,为每个想法分配高、中或低的优先级。以适合您团队的任何方式设置优先级;在构思之初,它可能只是您对每个想法的兴奋程度。

Some people find it useful to assign priorities to their ideas. Copy the ideas into a spreadsheet, with a single idea on each row. In a column next to the ideas, assign a priority of high, medium, or low to each idea. Set the priorities in whatever way is appropriate for your team; at the very beginning of ideation, it might just be your level of excitement about each idea.

您可以继续此过程,添加额外的列来记录每个想法的有趣程度、激动人心程度或实用程度,或者您提出的任何其他评估。您可以为不同的团队成员设置不同的列,以显示谁喜欢哪个想法。这对于发现共同的兴趣和在队友之间建立共识非常有用。随着游戏的核心思想开始出现,您可以根据想法与新兴方向的契合程度对它们进行优先排序。

You could continue this process by making additional columns for how interesting, exciting, or practical each idea is—or any other evaluation you come up with. You can have different columns for different team members, to show who likes which ideas. This can be valuable for discovering shared interests and building consensus among teammates. As a central idea for your game starts to emerge, you can prioritize ideas based on how well they seem to fit with the emerging direction.

优先考虑我们的想法有助于我们开始做出设计决策,并在此过程中确定创意方向。我们希望在构思阶段继续广泛探索,但我们也希望开始将我们的想法引向特定的方向。做一些像优先考虑我们的想法这样简单的事情,可以以一种不具威胁性的方式开始决策过程,因为我们还没有排除任何可能性。这就像设置船帆以迎着来自某个方向的风。这将确保,即使我们最终可能到达广阔地平线上的任何地方,我们也不会在原地打转。

Prioritizing our ideas helps us begin to make design decisions and, in doing so, to set a creative direction. We want to keep exploring widely during the ideation phase, but we also want to begin steering our thoughts in a particular direction. Doing something as simple as prioritizing our ideas begins the process of decision-making in a way that isn’t threatening, because we’re not ruling anything out yet. It’s rather like setting the sails of a ship to catch the wind from a certain direction. It will make sure that, even though we could end up anywhere on the wide horizon, we won’t be sailing around in circles.

如果团队中的每个人都对相同的想法感到兴奋,那就太好了。如果不同的人对不同的事情感到兴奋,并且无法达成一致,那么处于领导地位的人可以帮助决定方向。特蕾西·富勒顿认为,游戏团队领导力的一个重要方面是找到将想法相互联系的方法,以实现整个团队都兴奋的综合。1

If everyone on the team is excited about the same ideas, that’s great. If different people are excited about different things and can’t come to an agreement, then someone in a leadership position can help to decide a direction. Tracy Fullerton holds that an important aspect of game team leadership is finding ways to connect ideas to one another, to achieve a synthesis that the whole team is excited about.1

创意圈对头脑风暴的价值存在一些争议,有时人们过分强调头脑风暴是产生好想法的唯一来源。我个人认为简短的头脑风暴是一个很好的起点。头脑风暴可以快速提出很多想法,并且有助于加深团队对集体兴趣和热情的理解。

There is some debate in creative circles about the value of brainstorming, and sometimes it’s overemphasized as the one and only source of good ideas. I personally think a short brainstorm makes for a good starting point. Brainstorms get a lot of ideas on the table quickly and are valuable for developing the team’s understanding of their collective interests and passions.

思维导图

Mind Mapping

思维导图是头脑风暴的更结构化版本,当您想更深入地探索核心概念时,它非常有效。该技术非常简单:在白板、屏幕或纸张中间写下核心想法,然后开始头脑风暴,遵循上述所有相同规则。每个新想法都应与核心想法或已在思维导图中写下的另一个想法相关。您可以在图 2.1中看到一个处于创作阶段的思维导图示例。

Mind mapping is a more structured version of brainstorming and works well when you’ve arrived at a core concept that you want to explore in greater depth. The technique is very simple: write down the core idea in the middle of a whiteboard, screen, or sheet of paper, and begin to brainstorm, following all the same rules described above. Each new idea should be connected to the core idea or to another idea that has already been written down in the mind map. You can see an example of a mind map that is partway through creation in figure 2.1.

图 2.1

Figure 2.1

这是以“冰淇淋”概念为中心的未完成的思维导图。

A work-in-progress mind map centered on the concept of “ice cream.”

在想法之间画线,清晰地展示它们之间的关系。你很快就会得到一个辐射状的图案,显示想法集群,其中内置了“父子”层次结构。有时“子”想法会成为新主要集群的中心——没关系!让你的思维导图变得混乱,然后跟随它的指引。思维导图的空间结构将帮助你注意到你忽略的可能性。如果你在互联网上搜索,你可以找到许多很棒的数字工具来帮助进行思维导图。

Draw lines between the ideas, clearly showing the relationships among them. You’ll soon have a radiating pattern showing clusters of ideas with a built-in hierarchy of “parent and child.” Sometimes a “child” idea will take over as the center of a new major cluster—that’s okay! Let your mind map get messy and follow where it leads you. Mind mapping’s spatial structure will help draw your attention to possibilities that you’re overlooking. You can find many great digital tools to help with mind mapping if you search the Internet.

自动化

Automatism

二十世纪初,一群被称为超现实主义者的艺术家对潜意识的新概念着迷,他们希望通过探索潜意识来获取知识、摆脱社会习俗的束缚以及创造新的艺术形式。他们开发了实现这一目标的技术,其中许多技术被他们描述为游戏。如果你对这种创造性的探索感兴趣,我强烈推荐Alastair Brotchie 和 Mel Gooding 合著的《超现实主义游戏书。2

In the early twentieth century, a group of artists known as the Surrealists became fascinated by the new idea of the unconscious mind, wanting to explore it in pursuit of knowledge, freedom from restrictive social convention, and new types of art. They developed techniques for doing so, many of which they described as games. If you’re interested in this type of creative exploration, I strongly recommend A Book of Surrealist Games by Alastair Brotchie and Mel Gooding.2

超现实主义者喜欢的一种技巧叫做自动化(来自单词“ automatic ”,意为“自发完成”)。要使用自动化,只需坐下来,拿一张纸和一支铅笔,或坐在电脑前,设置一个 4 分钟到一个小时之间的计时器。启动计时器,然后继续书写(或绘画,如果你喜欢)直到计时器用完。不要停顿或犹豫;强迫自己把脑海中想到的一切都记录下来。跟随你的意识流。如果你诚实地做到这一点,就会很容易。不要回顾或分析你正在写下或画的内容。

One technique the Surrealists liked was called automatism (from the word automatic, meaning “done spontaneously”). To use automatism, simply sit down with a piece of paper and a pencil, or at a computer, and set a timer for anywhere between four minutes and an hour. Start your timer and then keep writing (or drawing, if you prefer) until your timer runs out. Don’t pause or hesitate; force yourself to transcribe whatever comes into your mind. Follow your stream of consciousness. If you do this honestly, it will be easy. Don’t review or analyze what you’re writing down or drawing.

你写下的很多内容都是无稽之谈或平庸之作。没关系。你写或画的一些内容会非常个人化,可能会让你感到惊讶甚至震惊。重要的是,每个人都应该有权保留自动化练习的结果私密。您写下的一些东西会很有趣、很不寻常、很感人或很有影响力。这就是您一直在寻找的黄金。您可以将其用作头脑风暴或思维导图的起点。

A lot of what you set down will be nonsense or banal. That’s okay. Some of what you write or draw will be very personal and might surprise or even shock you. It’s important that everyone should have the right to keep the results of an automatism exercise private. Some of what you put down will be interesting, unusual, moving, or otherwise powerful. That’s the gold you’ve been in search of. You can use it as a starting point for a brainstorm or a mind map.

其他蓝天思维技巧

Other Blue Sky Thinking Techniques

这只是蓝天思维活动的一小部分。还有很多其他活动,比如 Tracy Fullerton 在《游戏设计工作坊》6 章中描述的“剪切” 。3您还可以使用日记、故事板、Wikipedia:Random 或您最喜欢的占卜技术。4整个项目过程中都要随身携带笔记本;它将记录您的想法、计划、草图和图表,但它也是涂鸦和自由联想的地方。如果您在线搜索“构思技巧”,您会找到更多蓝天思维提示。

That’s just a small selection of blue sky thinking activities. There are many others, like “cut up,” which Tracy Fullerton describes in chapter 6 of Game Design Workshop.3 You might also use journaling, storyboarding, Wikipedia:Random, or your favorite divination technique.4 Keep a notebook throughout your project; it will hold your ideas, plans, sketches, and diagrams, but it’s also a place to doodle and free associate. If you search online for “ideation techniques,” you’ll find many more prompts for blue sky thinking.

设计师、电子表格和列表的力量

Designers, Spreadsheets, and the Power of the List

游戏设计师在工作过程中会列出很多清单。原始想法清单、游戏机制和关卡清单、功能和内容清单、待办事项清单和任务清单。有些人比其他人更容易接受这种做法,但成为一名优秀的列表制作者是一项可以学习的技能,也是成为游戏设计师的一个很好的方法。

Game designers end up making a lot of lists in the course of their work. Lists of raw ideas, lists of game mechanics and levels, lists of features and content, to-do lists and task lists. Some people take to this more easily than others, but being a good list-maker is a learnable skill and a great way to get ahead as a game designer.

我在顽皮狗工作期间,我们使用的大多数设计文档都是电子表格。我第一次看到电子表格时,感到非常害怕!它看起来像是会计师的幻觉,我不知道该怎么用它。如今,我喜欢电子表格——它们是游戏设计师工具包中最强大的工具之一,也是快速轻松地组织信息的最佳方式。

Most of the design documents we used during my time at Naughty Dog were spreadsheets. The first time I saw a spreadsheet, I felt quite frightened! It looked like something from an accountant’s fever dream, and I couldn’t understand what to do with it. Today, I love spreadsheets—they are one of the most powerful tools in the game designer’s toolkit and the best way to organize information quickly and easily.

电子表格让您能够使用方框网格(称为单元格)轻松访问页面的垂直和水平尺寸。是的,游戏设计师花费大量时间制作列表,但实际上我们更经常制作带有行和列的交叉引用信息的表格。例如,一旦您列出了游戏中角色的名称,您就需要跟踪他们使用的动画、移动速度等等。表格是电子表格的强项。将数字列相加的公式很容易学习。使用条件格式对单元格中的信息进行颜色编码,可以让您快速直观地看到重要信息。观看有关如何使用电子表格的在线视频,很快您也会爱上电子表格。

Spreadsheets give you easy access to the vertical and horizontal dimensions of your page using a grid of boxes (called cells). Yes, game designers spend a lot of time making lists, but in fact we more often make tables with rows and columns of cross-referenced information. As soon as you have listed out the names of the characters in your game, for example, you’ll need to keep track of what animations they use, how fast they can move, and so on. Tables are what spreadsheets are good at. Formulas that add up columns of numbers are a snap to learn. Conditional formatting that color-codes the information in the cells lets you see what’s important, quickly and intuitively. Watch an online video about how to use spreadsheets, and soon you’ll love spreadsheets too.

“列表的力量”这个短语在对项目管理感兴趣的人中很流行。列表之所以有力量,是因为知识就是力量。我们经常查看的列表可以帮助我们将所有想法都记在脑子里。能够访问与游戏相关的最新列表(例如所有不同角色的列表,或所有团队合作的关键在于有能力让游戏的这一部分变得出色,并且以高效的方式完成它。在一个健康的团队中,权力必须共享,因此请始终将列表放在公共位置,并告诉您的队友它们在哪里。做一个保持列表更新的人——这表明您是一位负责任的设计师。在整个项目过程中,每天维护列表比在突然需要列表所含信息时必须更新列表要高效得多。

The phrase “the power of the list” is popular among people interested in project management. Lists have power because knowledge is power. Lists that we look at regularly help us keep all our ideas present in our minds. Having access to an up-to-date list of something relating to your game (like a list of all the different characters, or all the collectable objects in the game) is to have the power to make that part of the game excellent and to do it in an efficient way. Power must be shared in a healthy team, so always put your lists in a public place and tell your teammates where they are. Be the person who keeps lists current—it demonstrates that you’re a responsible designer. It’s much more efficient to maintain a list day to day throughout a project than to have to update it when the information it contains is suddenly needed.

清单可以帮助我们避免犯错。从航空公司员工到外科医生,每个人都会使用清单来防止危及生命的事故和错误,并让初级员工在发现问题时敢于直言。5成为一个更好的清单记录员是制作更好游戏的一个简单而有效的方法。

Lists help us avoid making mistakes. Checklists are used by everyone from airline employees to surgeons to prevent life-threatening accidents and errors and to empower junior staff to speak up when they notice something going wrong.5 Becoming a better list-keeper is a simple and effective way to make better games.

人们有时认为创造力是一种神秘的过程,只有天生才华横溢的作者才能做到。我相信“尤里卡!”时刻的存在,那些灵光一闪的时刻,我们突然抓住了一些新的和伟大的东西。但我也相信托马斯·爱迪生的告诫是正确的,天才是“百分之一的灵感加上百分之九十九的汗水”。这就是为什么我们必须快速而大量地集思广益,从九十九个马马虎虎的想法中找出我们正在寻找的一个完美的想法。

People sometimes think of creativity as a mystical process practiced only by innately brilliant auteurs. I believe in the existence of eureka! moments, those flashes of inspiration where we suddenly seize upon something new and great. But I also believe in the truth of Thomas Edison’s admonition that genius is “one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” That’s why we have to brainstorm quickly and in quantity, to work through ninety-nine so-so ideas and find the one perfect idea we’re looking for.

创造力在我们的生活中无处不在,甚至在我们最平凡的行为中也无处不在,每个关心创造的人都可以获得创造力。创造力需要激情来推动它完成创造行为,所以要注意让你兴奋的事情。

Creativity is everywhere in our lives and in even the most mundane of our actions, and it’s accessible to everyone who cares to create. Creativity needs passion to push it through to the completion of the creative act, so take note of what you get excited about.

最后,如果你想在游戏设计上有所创新,不要因为某些想法不符合你已经熟悉的游戏机制而将其排除在外。相反,你可以考虑采用一个既简单又复杂的想法(“音乐品味”、“嫉妒”、“新年决心”),并使用我们将在接下来的三章中讨论的构思策略来探索它:研究和原型设计。

Finally, if you want to innovate in game design, don’t rule out ideas because they don’t fit onto the game mechanics that you’re already familiar with. Instead, consider taking an idea that is simple and complicated at the same time (“musical taste,” “jealousy,” “New Year’s resolution”) and exploring it using the ideation strategies that we’ll discuss in the next three chapters: research and prototyping.

  1. 1.私人通信,2020 年 5 月 25 日。

  2. 1.  Private communication, May 25, 2020.

  3. 2. Brotchie 和 Gooding,《超现实主义游戏之书》

  4. 2.  Brotchie and Gooding, A Book of Surrealist Games.

  5. 3. Fullerton,游戏设计工作室,第 4 版,179。

  6. 3.  Fullerton, Game Design Workshop, 4th ed., 179.

  7. 4. “Wikipedia:Random”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia :Random 。

  8. 4.  “Wikipedia:Random,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Random.

  9. 5.Don Sadler,“如何避免手术失误”,OR Today,2016 年 6 月 1 日,https://ortoday.com/how-to-avoid-surgical-errors/

  10. 5.  Don Sadler, “How to Avoid Surgical Errors,” OR Today, June 1, 2016, https://ortoday.com/how-to-avoid-surgical-errors/.

 

 

3 研究

3    Research

研究是构思阶段我最喜欢的部分之一,在创作每款《神秘海域》游戏时,研究都非常重要。我们希望将故事扎根于历史和地理事实中,因为我们知道,以这种方式“扎根”故事将有助于我们的观众暂时放下怀疑。我们希望通过《神秘海域》导演艾米·亨尼格 (Amy Hennig) 所说的“谷歌测试”——如果你在网上搜索游戏中的一些历史事件或地点,你会找到一系列事实,引导你走向现实世界。我们认为这可能会激起人们的好奇心,甚至可能让我们的游戏具有微妙的教育意义。

Research is one of my favorite parts of the ideation phase, and it was important in the creation of every Uncharted game. We wanted to root our stories in historical and geographic fact, because we knew that “grounding” them in this way would help our audience suspend their disbelief. We wanted to pass what Uncharted director Amy Hennig calls the “Google test”—if you searched online for some historical event or place in the game, you’d find a trail of facts leading you onward to the real world. We thought this might pique people’s curiosity, maybe even making our games subtly educational.

我认为几乎每款游戏都可以从一些研究中受益,从而为游戏在现实世界中奠定基础。幻想和科幻世界的创造者必须特别努力才能让他们的作品看起来有根有据、令人信服,而实现这一点所需的细节将来自现实。

I think that almost every game can benefit from some research to give it foundations in the real world. The creators of fantasy and science fiction worlds have to work particularly hard to make their creations seem grounded and believable, and the details needed to do that will come from reality.

互联网研究

Research on the Internet

在互联网时代之前,我们必须去图书馆或购买大量书籍才能研究一款游戏。现在我们有了维基百科、谷歌和 3.66 亿个注册互联网域名,只需点击几下鼠标,我们就能获得大量信息。

Before the Internet era, we’d have to go to a library or buy a lot of books to research a game. Now that we have Wikipedia, Google, and the 366 million registered Internet domain names, we have an incredible wealth of information just a few clicks away.

我喜欢探索维基百科、Reddit 和 Google 图片,既是为了寻找可靠的知识和信息,也是为了寻找那些看似虚假、错误或荒谬的东西。如果你想要真实的事实,一定要仔细检查你的资料来源。你可以利用研究更深入地探究你通过头脑风暴发现的主题,并帮助你的思维导图有更多的分支。

I love to explore Wikipedia, Reddit, and Google Images, both for credible knowledge and information and for things that seem spurious, mistaken, or ridiculous. Be sure to double-check your sources if you want real facts. You can use research to dive more deeply into a subject that you’ve discovered through brainstorming and to help give your mind maps more branches.

形象研究

Image Research

除了基于文本的研究,我还非常喜欢图片搜索。我喜欢将图片保存到硬盘上的本地文件夹中,然后使用它们来激发团队之间的对话。图片通常比文本更快地传达信息,并且会给不同的人带来不同的想法,这在你尝试广泛探索时非常有用。

As well as text-based research, I’m a big fan of image searching. I like to save images into a local folder on my hard drive and then use them to spur conversation among the team. Images usually convey information much more quickly than text and will give different people different ideas, which is useful when you’re trying to explore widely.

收集到一组好的图片后,你可以将它们组合成一个情绪板,即围绕某个想法或主题排列的一页或一屏图片。两张看似毫无关联的图片放在一起,可能会引发全新的想法和感受,就像著名的库里绍夫效应一样。1电影制作、营销和视频游戏设计等创意行业使用情绪板来快速有效地传达概念,并开启关于未来方向的讨论。使用 Microsoft Paint、Adobe Illustrator 或 Pinterest 等在线服务开始构建自己的情绪板或图像蒙太奇永远不会太早。

Once you’ve collected a good crop of images, you can assemble them into a mood board, a single page or screen of pictures arranged around a certain idea or theme. Putting two seemingly unconnected pictures next to each other can cause entirely new ideas and feelings to emerge, as in the famous Kuleshov effect.1 Creative industries like moviemaking, marketing, and videogame design use mood boards to convey a concept quickly and effectively and to open up discussion about future direction. It’s almost never too early to start building your own mood board or image montage, using Microsoft Paint, Adobe Illustrator, or an online service like Pinterest.

不要忽视图书馆

Don’t Neglect the Library

在互联网上进行研究固然很好,但讽刺的是,看似开放的互联网很容易让你陷入先入为主的无形壁垒中。因此,在研究过程中,一定要去当地的图书馆。熟练的图书管理员和实体藏书可以引导你找到你原本无法发现的想法、事实和艺术品。

Research on the Internet is great, but, ironically, the seemingly wide-open Internet can easily keep you inside the invisible walls of your preconceptions. So make sure you head to a local library as part of your research process. A skilled librarian and a physical collection of books can lead you toward ideas, facts, and artworks that you wouldn’t otherwise discover.

实地考察

Field Trips

一些最出色的研究往往发生在工作室、家或办公室之外。皮克斯以前往不同寻常的遥远地方进行研究而闻名——2009 年电影《飞屋环游记》中的超凡世界天堂瀑布就是在访问委内瑞拉卡奈马国家公园的特普伊台地后创作的。

Some of the best research happens outside your studio, home, or office. Pixar is famous for their research trips to unusual, far-flung places—the unearthly world of Paradise Falls in their 2009 film Up was created with help from a visit to the tepui mesas of Canaima National Park in Venezuela.

但你不必花大笔钱就可以为你的游戏进行实地考察研究。你很可能可以在当地找到灵感和知识,为你的设计和游戏打下坚实的基础。

But you don’t have to have a big budget to do great field trip research for your game. Chances are there is somewhere local you can go to find inspiration and knowledge that informs your design and grounds your game in reality.

记录你在周围世界中看到的过程和系统。日常生活中的哪些方面可以成为游戏机制、环境和故事叙述的有趣部分?观察人们是任何实地研究旅行的重要组成部分。带上你的笔记本,把所有事情都写下来。在不侵犯任何人隐私的情况下拍照。必要时征求许可。向你每天看到但从未详细观察过的世界部分介绍自己。迷失在你自己的城市里,用全新的眼光看待熟悉的事物。

Take note of the processes and systems that you see in the world around you. What aspects of daily life could become interesting parts of your game’s mechanics, environments, and storytelling? People-watching is a great part of any research field trip. Take your notebook with you and write everything down. Without invading anyone’s privacy, take photos. Ask for permission where necessary. Introduce yourself to parts of the world that you see every day but have never looked at in detail. Get lost in your own town and look at the familiar with fresh eyes.

采访

Interviews

进行采访是寻找创意和激发创造力的绝佳方式。在本书后面,我们将探讨将人置于设计过程中心的重要性,使用游戏测试和其他技术。这就是 Tracy Fullerton 所说的以游戏为中心的游戏设计,它是设计中可以追溯到历史的人文主义传统的一部分。2设计中的人文主义可以追溯到十九世纪工艺美术运动、二十世纪建筑师如弗里登斯列·汉德瓦瑟以及荒川和玛德琳·金斯团队的作品,以及硅谷创意机构 IDEO 在以人为本的设计方面的创新,等等。

Conducting interviews can be an excellent way to find ideas and ignite your creativity. Later in this book we’ll look at the importance of placing people at the center of your design process, using playtesting and other techniques. This is what Tracy Fullerton calls playcentric game design, and it is part of a humanist tradition in design that reaches back into history.2 Humanism in design can be seen in the nineteenth century Arts and Crafts movement, in the work of twentieth-century architects like Friedensreich Hundertwasser and the team of Arakawa and Madeline Gins, and in the innovations made in human-centered design at the Silicon Valley creative agency IDEO, to name but a few.

在你还没有游戏创意之前,你就可以开始与人们讨论游戏设计。许多伟大的设计项目都是从采访人们的生活、想法和感受开始的。选择你想要为其设计游戏的人,询问他们关于日常活动、休闲时间、兴趣,甚至希望、需求和恐惧的问题。记下他们的回答,或者录制采访的音频或视频。你会得到大量令人惊讶的有趣想法——其中一个可能会激发你下一个游戏项目的诞生。

You can start talking to people about your game’s design before you even have an idea for your game. Many great design projects start with interviewing people about their lives, their thoughts, and their feelings. Choose someone you’d like to design a game for, and ask them questions about their daily activities, their leisure time, their interests, even their hopes, needs, and fears. Write down their responses or make an audio or video recording of the interview. You’ll get back a wealth of surprising, interesting ideas—one of which might spark the genesis of your next game project.

阴影

Shadowing

有时仅通过与人交谈很难获得关于他们的良好信息——我们都有偏见,会扭曲我们的想法和言论,人们常常忽略可能令我们作为设计师感兴趣的细节。

Sometimes it’s hard to get good information about people just by talking to them—we all have biases that skew what we think and say, and people often overlook details that could be interesting to us as designers.

跟踪研究让我们能够深入了解人们的生活、兴趣和喜好。这是一种研究技术,起源于 20 世纪 50 年代的管理学,是设计和咨询公司 IDEO 以人为本的设计实践的一部分。跟踪研究包括在获得某人许可的情况下陪伴他们度过一天。我们观察被跟踪的人并做笔记、录音和录像,并收集他们在某些地方和活动上花费的时间等数据。通过观察人们的生活,谨慎地、不受干扰地观察他们,我们可以更深入地了解他们的行为、观点和动机。

Shadowing gives us a way to dig deeper into people’s lives, interests, and preferences. It is a research technique that has its roots in management studies in the 1950s and was developed as part of the human-centered design practice of design and consulting firm IDEO. Shadowing involves accompanying someone, with their permission, as they go through their day. We observe the person we’re shadowing and take notes, make audio and video recordings, and gather data such as how much time they spend in locations and activities. By seeing people going about their lives, observing them discreetly and without interference, we can gain a deeper understanding of their behavior, opinions, and motivations.

跟踪还能帮助我们了解个人、朋友和家人如何利用玩游戏的闲暇时间——他们在玩游戏时如何相互联系和互动,无论是一起玩还是一个人玩,其他人在看。合作和竞争游戏的新想法可能会以这种方式出现。跟踪在设计旨在为玩家健康带来积极结果的“健康游戏”以及设计“严肃游戏”、“应用游戏”和教育游戏方面很有用。它也可能有助于实验游戏设计师和艺术游戏制作者的极富创新性的工作。

Shadowing can also help us see how individuals, friends, and families use their game-playing leisure time—how they relate to and interact with each other when they’re playing, whether they’re playing together or if one person is playing and others are watching. New ideas for cooperative and competitive games might emerge in this way. Shadowing is useful in the design of “health games” designed to create positive outcomes in the health of their players and in the design of “serious games,” “applied games,” and educational games. It could also be helpful in the wildly innovative work of experimental game designers and art game makers.

研究笔记

Research Notes

确保以研究笔记的形式记录您的发现。在互联网上进行研究时,很容易陷入点击恍惚状态,最后除了浏览器历史记录外一无所获。花点时间将文本、图像和链接复制粘贴到研究笔记文档中,让您自己和您的团队在项目过程中以及遇到困难并需要帮助时可以参考灵感。一个最初看似不相关的想法,后来可能会被证明是有用的,甚至是变革性的。

Make sure to keep a record of your findings in the form of research notes. Doing research on the Internet, it’s easy to go into a click-trance and emerge with nothing to show for it but your browser history. Take the time to copy-paste text, images, and links into a research notes document, giving yourself and your team something you can refer back to throughout the course of your project and whenever you’re stuck and need some inspiration. An idea that didn’t seem relevant early on might prove to be useful or even transformational later.

研究应该是你构思阶段的重要组成部分,你可以在 IDEO 方法卡组中发现更多蓝天思维和研究技术。设计机构 IDEO 的这个实用、鼓舞人心且极具创新性的工具有 51 种技术可以“让人们成为工作的中心!” 3 Situation Lab 屡获殊荣的“想象游戏” The Thing from the Future,由我的 USC Games 同事、已故的 Jeff Watson 和卡内基梅隆大学设计教授 Stuart Candy 设计,是另一个很棒的卡组工具,专为设计师和其他希望就未来进行有趣和深思熟虑的对话的人而设计。4 Mary Flanagan 和 Helen Nissenbaum 的Grow-a-Game卡片帮助设计师更有意识地将人类价值观融入他们的游戏系统中。5

Research should be a rich part of your ideation phase, and you can discover many more blue sky thinking and research techniques in the IDEO Method Cards deck. This useful, inspirational, and highly innovative tool from design agency IDEO has fifty-one techniques to “keep people at the center of your work!”3 Situation Lab’s award-winning “imagination game,” The Thing from the Future, designed by my USC Games colleague, the late Jeff Watson, and Carnegie Mellon University design professor Stuart Candy, is another great card deck tool, created for designers and others looking to have playful and thoughtful conversations about the future.4 Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum’s Grow-a-Game cards help designers be more intentional about the ways in which they integrate human values into their game-based systems.5

对于我们中的一些人来说,研究是如此令人愉快,以至于它很容易占用我们所有的构思时间。限制你花在研究上的时间,这样你就不会在你将发现的兔子洞里花太长时间。尝试在自由形式的探索和对特定主题的更有条理的调查之间找到一个良好的平衡。不断回顾你最初研究的概念,并尽量保持正轨。

For some of us, research is so enjoyable that it can easily eat up all our ideation time. Set limits on the time you spend researching, so that you don’t spend too long down the rabbit holes you’ll discover. Try to find a good balance between free-form exploration and more structured investigations of particular topics. Keep referring back to the concept you were originally researching and try to stay on track.

你不必把所有的时间都花在目标上;不受束缚的思考也具有巨大的美感和价值。但要小心不要在原地打转。向外、向上、向内或向下探索,但要定期检查自己是否充分利用了时间。如果你做好了研究,你就会创造出基于我们共同现实的美妙新体验。世界是一位伟大的老师。让它告诉你一些关于你的游戏的东西。

Not all your time has to be goal-directed; there is great beauty and value in untrammeled thought. Just be wary of swimming in circles. Explore outward, upward, inward, or downward, but check in regularly to see if you’re making good use of your time. If you do your research well, you’ll create wonderful new experiences that are grounded in our shared realities. The world is a great teacher. Let it tell you something about your game.

  1. 1 . “库列绍夫效应”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect

  2. 1.  “Kuleshov Effect,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuleshov_effect.

  3. 2.Fullerton《游戏设计工作坊》,第4版,16。

  4. 2.  Fullerton, Game Design Workshop, 4th ed., 16.

  5. 3 . IDEO产品开发,IDEO方法卡

  6. 3.  IDEO Product Development, IDEO Method Cards.

  7. 4. Jeff Watson 和 Stuart Candy,《来自未来的东西》,2017 年,Situation Lab,http://situationlab.org/project/the-thing-from-the-future/

  8. 4.  Jeff Watson and Stuart Candy, The Thing from The Future, 2017, Situation Lab, http://situationlab.org/project/the-thing-from-the-future/.

  9. 5. Mary Flanagan 和 Helen Nissenbaum,“Grow-A-Game:概述。”《Values at Play》,https://www.valuesatplay.org/grow-a-game-overview

  10. 5.  Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum, “Grow-A-Game: Overview.” Values at Play, https://www.valuesatplay.org/grow-a-game-overview.

 

 

4 游戏原型设计:概述

4    Game Prototyping: An Overview

头脑风暴和研究固然很好,但创意的命脉并不是真正的思考,而是实践

Brainstorming and research are good, but the lifeblood of ideation is not really thinking; it’s making.

一点点思考就能产生很大的效果,但没有什么可以取代通过创造人们可以玩的东西而获得的发现和设计经验。因此,在构思过程中最重要的活动就是制作原型。

A little thinking goes a long way, but nothing can replace the discoveries made and the design lessons learned by creating things that people can play with. So the most important activity to get busy with during ideation is prototyping.

我再怎么强调也不为过:你应该从一点空想开始,也许是一次头脑风暴,也许做一点研究,只需二十分钟左右。之后,你应该立即开始构建你的第一个原型。如果你的构思正确,这个原型将是众多原型中的第一个。正如 Autodesk 研究员兼技术先驱 Tom Wujec 在他的 TED 演讲“建一座塔,组建一个团队”中指出的那样,“设计是一项接触性运动。” 1在我们开始建造之前,我们无法发现可能损害或帮助我们项目的隐藏假设。

I can’t stress this enough: you should start with a small amount of blue sky thinking, perhaps a single brainstorm, and maybe do a little research, just twenty minutes or so. After that, you should immediately start building your first prototype. If you’re doing ideation right, this prototype will be the first of many. As Autodesk Fellow and technology pioneer Tom Wujec points out in his TED Talk “Build a Tower, Build a Team,” “design is a contact sport.”1 Until we start to build, we can’t discover the hidden assumptions that could harm or help our project.

我注意到,当人们坐下来为游戏制作原型时,他们通常会立即开始尝试构建完整的游戏。这样做的人很少能取得好成绩。他们将精力投入到基于先入为主的观念的工作中,而这些工作并没有真正帮助他们指导设计,他们甚至在真正开始之前就开始精疲力竭。

I’ve noticed that when people sit down to do some prototyping for a game, they often start trying to build a complete game straightaway. Things rarely go well for people who do this. They pour energy into work that is based on preconceptions, work that doesn’t really help to guide their design, and they start to get burned out before they’ve even really begun.

因此,在我开始给你提供游戏原型策略之前,我想非常清楚地强调一点:

So before I start giving you strategies to prototype your game, I want to emphasize something very clearly:

你的原型并不是你的游戏的演示。

Your prototypes are not demos of your game.

在我们讨论创建垂直切片的过程中,我将指导您制作游戏的演示(“演示”的缩写)。制作演示成为设计游戏的重要部分。

I will guide you toward making a demo (short for “demonstration”) of your game later in our process when we talk about the creation of a vertical slice. Making a demo will become an important part of designing your game.

但现在:

But for now:

您制作的每个原型都会探索游戏的一个或多个想法。

Each prototype you make explores one or more ideas for your game.

真正的原型会测试极少数东西——也许只有一件事。如果你能发现一个有趣的、好玩的、有情感的或引人注目的玩家活动,那么你的原型就达到了它的目的,并将成为未来的基础设计工作。(稍后会详细介绍玩家活动。)如果您没有发现任何好的东西,您可以重新开始使用新的原型。

A true prototype tests a very small number of things—maybe just one thing. If you can discover just one player activity that is interesting, fun, emotional, or otherwise compelling, then your prototype has served its purpose, and will act as a foundation for future design work. (More on player activities in a moment.) If you don’t discover anything good, you can start over again with a new prototype.

在构思过程中,你应该尽可能多地制作不同的原型。如果你速度快、专注,每个原型可能只需要两三个小时就能制作、测试和迭代。如果你速度慢也没关系,但要保持原型简单明了。

During ideation, you should aim to make as many different prototypes as you possibly can. If you’re fast and focused, each prototype might only take you two or three hours to make, playtest, and iterate upon. It’s okay if you’re slower, but keep your prototypes simple and to the point.

游戏机制、动词和玩家活动

Game Mechanics, Verbs, and Player Activities

游戏机制是游戏中构成其功能和互动性的规则和流程。它们控制着玩家可以做什么以及游戏如何开始、展开和最终结束。游戏机制使游戏设计师通常所说的游戏动词成为可能——“行动词”。例如,你的玩家角色可能会移动、行动、说话或购买。

Game mechanics are the rules and processes in a game that make up its functioning and interactivity. They govern what the player can do and how the game starts, unfolds, and eventually ends. Game mechanics make possible what game designers often call the verbs of a game—the “doing words.” For example, your player-character might move, act, speak, or buy.

一些游戏动词更“原子化”——在某些类型的游戏中,按下按钮让角色跳跃是一个基本的动词原子。其他游戏动词可能更“分子化”,由这些动词原子组组成。例如,探索是一个游戏动词,它可能由原子动词行走跳跃爬升爬行移动游戏摄像机组成。当然,就像原子由亚原子粒子组成一样,原子游戏动词可以进一步分解。攀爬可能由亚原子游戏动词向左到达向右到达放下测力跳跃等组成。

Some game verbs are more “atomic”—pressing a button to make a character jump is a basic verb atom in certain types of games. Other game verbs might be more “molecular” and are made up of groups of these verb atoms. For example, explore is a game verb that might be made up of the atomic verbs walk, jump, climb, crawl, and move the game camera. Of course, just like an atom is made up of subatomic particles, atomic game verbs can be broken down further. Climb might be made up of the subatomic game verbs reach left, reach right, drop down, dyno jump, and so on.

玩家活动是我们用来描述玩家如何使用特定动词的术语。玩家活动可能是在第一人称游戏中使用 WASD 键、鼠标和 Shift 键四处寻找出口。它可能是通过点击触摸屏尝试在三消游戏中的网格中连续获得三个相同的物品;或者它可能是通过点击 Twine 游戏中的链接第二次浏览故事,尝试找到不同的结局。玩家活动是游戏机制、动词和叙事以及玩家的感知、想法、行动和意图相结合的结果。

Player activity is a term we use to describe how the player uses a particular verb. A player activity might be running around looking for the exit in a first-person game using the WASD keys, the mouse, and the Shift key. It might be trying to get three of the same items in a row in the grid of a match-three game by tapping on a touchscreen; or it might be navigating through a story for the second time, trying to find a different ending by clicking on the links in a Twine game. Player activities are the result of the combination of your game’s mechanics, verbs, and narrative, along with the player’s perceptions, thoughts, actions, and intent.

和许多游戏设计师一样,我倾向于交替使用这些术语,但我认为在原型设计时将机制和动词作为玩家活动来讨论,会提醒我们将玩家的行为和体验放在讨论的首位。玩家活动通常按循环顺序排列,我们将在第 10 章中更多地讨论游戏的“核心循环”。当我们对游戏进行更深入的分析时,我们可能会讨论玩家活动的模式,我们会看到不同的玩家群体使用相同的机制和动词来表达截然不同的游戏风格。最著名的玩家活动模式识别是理查德·巴特尔 (Richard Bartle) 著名的玩家类型杀手、成就者、社交者和探险者。2

Like many game designers, I tend to use these terms interchangeably, but I think that talking about mechanics and verbs as player activities when we’re prototyping reminds us to keep the player’s actions and experiences in the foreground of the discussion. Player activities are often sequenced into loops, and we’ll look more at the “core loop” of a game in chapter 10. When we get into a deeper analysis of a game, we might talk about patterns of player activity, where we see different groups of players using the same mechanics and verbs to express widely different styles of play. The most famous identification of patterns of player activity is Richard Bartle’s famous player types of killer, achiever, socializer, and explorer.2

对于你制作的每个原型,问自己:

For each prototype you make, ask yourself:

  •    我在这里设计了哪些玩家活动的原型?
  •    What player activity am I prototyping here?
  •    我正在研究哪些游戏动词?
  •    What game verbs am I investigating?
  •    这次玩家活动产生了什么样的体验?
  •    What kind of experience does this player activity produce?
  •    玩家活动具有什么样的基调或情绪?
  •    What tone or mood does the player activity have?
  •    我现在可以利用这项玩家活动做哪些有趣的游戏和故事?
  •    What interesting gameplay and story things can I do with this player activity right now?
  •    如果我有时间设计不同的情况和场景来使用这项玩家活动,我可以用它做多少事情?
  •    How much could I do with this player activity if I had the time to devise different situations and scenarios in which to use it?
  •    我试图用这个原型来回答什么问题?
  •    What question am I trying to answer with this prototype?

最后一点非常重要。以《孢子地球入门》而闻名的设计师 Chaim Gingold给出了许多关于制作原型的极好建议。他为 Tracy Fullerton 的书《游戏设计研讨会》写了一篇名为“灾难性原型和其他故事”的文章,您也可以在网上找到它。Chaim 建议我们设计每个原型来回答我们提出的问题:“例如,您可能正在考虑一群鱼的基于鼠标的控制方案。你的问题是:我如何用鼠标控制这些鱼?” Chaim 指出了原型设计的其他好处,例如使用原型说服队友一个想法是可行的。他还给出了快速经济地工作的建议,不要试图一次做太多事情,并充分利用我们的时间。Chaim 的文章很精彩 - 现在就去读吧。3

This last point is very important. The designer Chaim Gingold, who is known for his work on Spore and Earth Primer, has a lot of excellent advice to give about making prototypes. He wrote an essay called “Catastrophic Prototyping and Other Stories” for Tracy Fullerton’s book Game Design Workshop, and you can also find it online. Chaim advises us to design each prototype to answer a question we’re asking: “For example, you might be thinking about mouse-based control schemes for a school of fish. Your question is: how do I control these fish with a mouse?” Chaim points out other benefits of prototyping, like using prototypes to persuade teammates that an idea will work. He also gives advice about working quickly and economically, not trying to do too much at once, and using our time well. Chaim’s essay is excellent—go read it now.3

三种原型设计

Three Kinds of Prototyping

根据您的背景,您可能对原型设计有强烈的先入之见。我想通过提供三种不同的原型设计来改变您的先入之见:好玩的原型设计、物理原型设计和数字原型设计。

Depending on your background, you might have strong preconceptions about prototyping. I want to shake them up by offering you three different kinds: playful prototyping, physical prototyping, and digital prototyping.

有趣的原型设计

Playful Prototyping

原型是将想法变成现实的一种方式,这就是幼儿在拿起玩具动物并摇晃它时所做的,他们发出咆哮的声音。创意过程就是为你的设计注入一些动力,根据我的经验,没有比拿起玩具或其他物品并说“让我们想象一下…… ”更好的开始方式了。

A prototype is a way of bringing an idea to life, and this is what a toddler does when they pick up a toy animal and jiggle it around, making a growling sound. The ideation process is all about putting some wind in the sails of your design, and in my experience, there is no better way to start than by picking up a toy or other object and saying, “Let’s imagine

例如,我可能会用一个动作人物和一些盒子来演示游戏角色应该如何爬上一堆倒塌的岩石。我可能会用两辆玩具车来展示赛车游戏机制的工作原理,或者我可能会用一把勺子和一把叉子来模拟两个非玩家角色在争吵时的肢体语言。

For example, I might use an action figure and some boxes to figure out how a game character should scramble up a pile of collapsing rocks. I might use two toy cars to show how a racing game mechanic works, or I might use a spoon and a fork to play-act the body language of two nonplayer characters during an argument.

随着幼儿长大,他们开始玩假装游戏,扮演角色并表演场景。这也可以成为好玩的原型设计的一部分。在顽皮狗和 Crystal Dynamics,我和我的同事经常使用扮演游戏来明确我们的设计理念并解决问题。

As toddlers get older, they start to play make-believe, taking on roles and acting out scenarios. This can be a part of playful prototyping too. At Naughty Dog and Crystal Dynamics, my colleagues and I would often use playacting as a way to bring clarity to our design ideas and to problem-solve.

在无数次的设计会议上,我都站起来开始表演我们游戏中某个角色可能执行的活动:从钥匙孔往里看、爬过狭窄的空间、拉链条。通过这样做,我阐明了想法并鼓励了讨论。特雷西·富勒顿告诉我,沃尔特·迪斯尼以表演他的角色的姿势和动作而闻名——比如拿着毒苹果的女巫——而他的同事们则疯狂地画画以捕捉他的表情和手势。

In countless design meetings, I have stood up and begun to act out an activity that might be performed by a character in our game: peering through a keyhole, crawling through a narrow space, pulling on a chain. In doing so, I’m illustrating ideas and encouraging discussion. Tracy Fullerton told me that Walt Disney was famous for acting out the postures and actions of his characters—such as the witch with the poison apple—while his colleagues drew furiously to capture his expressions and gestures.

一旦我们能够看到(并部分想象到)眼前有东西在运动,我们就会开始探索设计理念。钥匙孔是否太低?爬行空间是否太窄?链条是否太重而无法提起?我不会在这里多谈好玩的原型设计;它是如此开放,以至于你可以发明自己的技术。这可能不应该是你使用的唯一原型设计策略,但它可能会成为你最喜欢的策略之一。

As soon as we can see (and partly imagine) something in motion before us, we begin to make discoveries about our design ideas. Is the keyhole too low? Is the crawl space too narrow? Is the chain too heavy to lift? I won’t say more about playful prototyping here; it’s so wide-open that you can invent your own techniques. This probably shouldn’t be the only prototyping strategy that you use, but it might turn out to be one of your favorites.

物理原型

Physical Prototyping

Tracy Fullerton 在她的《游戏设计工作坊》一书中描述了以游戏为中心的游戏设计流程的最伟大创新之一,即使用物理原型。物理原型设计涉及棋盘游戏、纸牌游戏和其他类型的非数字游戏活动(如体育或操场游戏)的创作。这当然可以设计出出色的棋盘游戏、纸牌游戏和体育游戏,但它也是设计数字游戏的有效方法。例如,BumbleBear Games 的出色实时战略平台视频游戏Killer Queen最初就是作为物理团队游戏进行原型设计的。4

One of the greatest innovations of the playcentric game design process that Tracy Fullerton describes in her book Game Design Workshop is the use of physical prototypes. Physical prototyping involves the creation of board games, card games, and other kinds of nondigital play activity like a sport or a playground game. This can, of course, lead to the design of great board games, card games, and sports, but it is also a powerful way of designing a digital game. For example, BumbleBear Games’ superb real-time strategy platform videogame Killer Queen was initially prototyped as a physical team game.4

特蕾西告诉我,她开始使用物理原型设计来帮助设计师摆脱现有游戏类型已解决的问题,探索创新的新游戏设计空间。事实证明,这是一种非常强大的技术,物理原型设计现在已成为南加州大学游戏课程中游戏设计教学方式的基石。

Tracy told me that she started using physical prototyping to help designers break away from the solved problems of existing genres of play and explore innovative new game design spaces. It turned out to be such a powerful technique that physical prototyping is now a bedrock of the way that game design is taught in the USC Games program.

如何制作物理原型

How to Make a Physical Prototype

制作物理原型很容易,而且可以使用各种材料。最常用的材料是纸张(复印纸也可以)和钢笔、铅笔或蜡笔。您不必擅长绘画;火柴人也可以。制作时,您需要胶带或胶水和剪刀。索引卡很有用,用途广泛;卡片纸的刚性使它们既可以用作扑克牌,也可以用作游戏棋子和环境元素的构建材料。一些塑料、木材或玻璃计数器非常适合代表游戏棋子或资源令牌。经常使用便签。

It’s easy to make a physical prototype, and you can use a wide range of materials in building one. The most commonly used elements are paper—copier paper will work fine—and pens, pencils, or crayons. You don’t have to be able to draw well; stick figures are fine. For construction, you’ll need tape or glue and scissors. Index cards are useful and versatile; the rigidity of the cardstock makes them equally useful as playing cards or as construction material for game pieces and environmental elements. Some plastic, wood, or glass counters are good for representing game pieces or resource tokens. Sticky notes are often used.

图 4.1

Figure 4.1

Jenny Jiao Hsia 为伦敦维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆的“电子游戏”展览《Consume Me》制作的实物原型。

Jenny Jiao Hsia’s physical prototypes for Consume Me, “Videogames” Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

想一想您想要研究的玩家活动。它可能是用叉子捡起一片水果、在沙尘暴中跋涉,或者按颜色对魔法珠进行分类。您想要表示的底层系统是什么?您如何将它们抽象为棋盘游戏和纸牌游戏中有效的惯例和表示?通过这种方式,您可以使用物理原型技术开始研究构成游戏的动词和游戏机制。

Think about a player activity that you want to investigate. It might be picking up a piece of fruit with a fork, trudging through a sandstorm, or sorting magic beads by their color. What are the underlying systems that you want to represent? How can you abstract them into the conventions and representations that work in board games and card games? In this way, you can use physical prototyping techniques to begin to investigate the verbs and game mechanics that will make up your game.

您还可以开始实际制作更复杂的玩家活动模式的原型。如果您想制作一款角色探索洞穴系统的游戏,您可以制作一个简单的棋盘游戏,其中有一条可供移动的轨道,里面充满了塌方、急转弯和水下部分。如果您想制作一款关于国际金融世界的游戏,您可以将索引卡标记为股票、债券和现金,并开始设计一个合法交易和可疑活动的系统。

You can also start to physically prototype more complex patterns of player activity. If you want to make a game where a character explores a system of caves, you could make a simple board game with a track to move along, full of cave-ins, switchbacks, and underwater sections. If you want to make a game about the world of international finance, you could mark up index cards as stocks, bonds, and cash, and begin to design a system of legitimate trades and shady activity.

发明是物理原型设计的当务之急。您可能是一位经验丰富的棋盘游戏设计师,能够轻松地在玩家活动、动词和物理游戏和数字游戏的机制中找到相似之处。如果您和我一样,作为棋盘游戏设计师的经验较少,那么您的流程可能会更松散。您的物理原型甚至可能感觉更像是好玩的原型。正如 Tracy Fullerton 提醒我的那样,“重要的是要记住,原型设计始终是为了回答问题,因此如果您没有可以通过物理原型回答的问题,那么请使用其他格式!”

Invention is the order of the day in physical prototyping. You might be an experienced board game designer who can easily find parallels in the player activities, verbs, and mechanics of physical games and digital games. If, like me, you have less experience as a board game designer, your process might be looser. Your physical prototypes might even feel more like playful prototypes. As Tracy Fullerton reminded me, “It’s important to remember that prototyping is always about answering questions, so if you don’t have a question that will be answered by a physical prototype, then use another format!”

图 4.2

Figure 4.2

数字游戏《Daunting Dollhouse》的实体原型,由 Chao Chen、Christoph Rosenthal、George Li 和 Julian Ceipek 在 USC Games IMGD MFA 课堂上创建。照片来源:George Li。

A physical prototype of a digital game, Daunting Dollhouse, by Chao Chen, Christoph Rosenthal, George Li, and Julian Ceipek created in a USC Games IMGD MFA class. Photo credit: George Li.

测试物理原型

Playtesting a Physical Prototype

一旦你构建了物理原型,就到了本书中最重要的活动,也是我们会反复回顾的活动。是时候进行游戏测试了。

Once you’ve built your physical prototype, it’s time for the most important activity in this book, and one that we’ll come back to over and over again. It’s time to playtest.

游戏测试是健康游戏设计实践的基础。我将在本书后面详细介绍我的游戏测试方法,但现在,我希望您尽可能多地让其他人玩您的实体原型。不要太担心原型的呈现方式:只要人们可以阅读您的文字、理解您使用的符号并处理游戏部件,您就可以开始了。

Playtesting is the foundation of a healthy game design practice. I’ll describe my approach to playtesting in great detail later in this book, but for now, I want you to get other people to play your physical prototype as often and as early as you can. Don’t worry too much about the presentation of your prototype: as long as people can read your writing, understand the symbols you’ve used, and handle the playing pieces, you’re ready to start.

写出游戏规则,这样玩家无需与你交谈就能学会。写出规则并进行“规则测试”是每个游戏设计师早期教育的重要组成部分。它能让我们了解系统的复杂性、我们在传达游戏设计理念时面临的挑战,以及游戏的每个方面如何可以被解读。你可以使用人机交互学科中的“绿野仙踪”方法,你(设计师)可以代替计算机在后台运行游戏,提供信息并代表游戏采取行动。

Write out the rules of the game so that your players can learn it without talking to you. Doing this and then conducting “rules tests” is an important part of every game designer’s early education. It develops our understanding of the complexity of systems, the challenges we face in communicating game design ideas, and how every aspect of a game is open to interpretation. You might use the “Wizard of Oz” method from the academic discipline of human-computer interaction, where you (the designer) stand in for the computer that could be running the game in the background, giving information and taking actions on behalf of the game.

当你观察你的游戏测试者时,仔细写下你的观察结果。他们对游戏中可以做什么和不能做什么有什么了解?然后他们会尝试什么做什么?他们不明白什么?你的游戏测试员对什么感到兴奋,什么让他们感到沮丧?什么让他们发笑或感到悲伤?他们还表现出什么其他情绪?你的游戏测试员似乎想反复做哪些活动,他们又不愿意尝试哪些活动?

As you watch your playtesters, carefully write down your observations. What do they understand about what they can and can’t do in the game? What do they then try to do? What do they fail to understand? What do your playtesters get excited about, and what makes them frustrated? What makes them laugh or feel sad? What other emotions do they show? What kind of activities do your playtesters seem to want to do over and over, and what are they reluctant to try?

迭代物理原型    物理原型设计的一个优点是速度快。只需用笔或剪刀几下就可以对设计进行根本性的更改。你不太可能仅仅因为投入了时间并产生了感情就坚持设计中不起作用的方面。这一点至关重要,因为几乎每次游戏测试后你都必须做的就是迭代设计。添加、删除和修改内容,同时寻求改进设计。什么才是改进?你可以自由决定,但必须承认游戏测试的结果。

Iterating on Your Physical Prototype    One great thing about physical prototyping is that it’s quick. You can make fundamental changes to your design with a few strokes of your pen or snips of your scissors. You’re less likely to hold on to an aspect of your design that isn’t working just because you invested time in creating it and have become emotionally attached. This is crucial, because what you must do after nearly every playtest is iterate on your design. Add, remove, and alter things, all the while looking to improve your design. What constitutes an improvement? You are free to decide, but you must acknowledge the results of the playtest.

我有时会遇到一些人,他们认为游戏测试很糟糕,因为它会“降低”游戏设计的质量。这种想法是完全错误的。在游戏设计领域,没有什么比玩家和游戏之间无中介的接触更现实的了。玩家永远不会“玩错”,也很少“只是不明白”。(这些是人们在设计不成功时有时会找的借口。)玩家的行为和体验是游戏设计质量的真实表达,也是任何游戏设计师所能拥有的对其工作的最佳表现。正如我曾经听到游戏设计师兼教育家约翰·夏普所说的那样:“游戏设计就像脱口秀:设计师和喜剧演员可以立即知道某件事是否成功。”

I sometimes encounter people who think that playtesting is bad because it “dumbs down” a game’s design. Thinking like this could not be more wrong. There is no greater reality in the world of game design than an unmediated encounter between a player and a game. The player can never be “playing it wrong” and is rarely “just not getting it.” (These are excuses that people sometimes make when their designs aren’t working.) The player’s actions and experiences are authentic expressions of the quality of a game’s design, and the best representation of their work that any game designer can have. As I once heard the game designer and educator John Sharp put it: “Game design is like stand-up comedy: the designer and the comedian immediately know whether something has worked or not.”

然而,游戏设计师绝不能盲目地追随或被动地回应玩家在游戏测试中的行为或玩家在游戏中想要的东西。熟练的设计师会学会根据他们的创作目标来解释游戏测试的结果,而你可以根据游戏测试的结果和你的目标来决定游戏设计的未来方向。

However, game designers should never blindly follow or reactively respond to what players do in a playtest or seem to want in a game. Skillful designers learn to interpret the results of a playtest in the context of their creative goals, and you are at liberty to determine the future course of your game’s design, in the light of the results of a playtest, based on your goals.

人们经常建议游戏设计师在游戏测试中“追求乐趣”,如果你追求的是乐趣,那么这是个很好的建议。我喜欢游戏中的乐趣,喜欢思考是什么让游戏变得有趣,我认为几乎每个人都认为玩得开心是他们幸福和幸福的核心。但并不是每个人都以同样的方式获得乐趣,游戏不必是传统意义上的乐趣;也许它们根本就不需要有趣。我最喜欢的一些游戏,比如 Liz Ryerson 的《Problem Attic》,故意拒绝提供我们从其他游戏中获得的传统类型的愉悦乐趣。5

Game designers are often advised to “follow the fun” in a playtest, and that’s great advice, if it’s fun that you’re after. I love fun in games, I love thinking about what makes a game fun, and I think that almost every human being finds having fun to be central to their happiness and well-being. But not everyone has fun in the same way, and games don’t have to be fun in a traditional sense; maybe they don’t have to be fun at all. Some of my favorite games, like Liz Ryerson’s Problem Attic, deliberately refuse to provide the traditional type of pleasurable fun that we get from other games.5

在游戏测试中,明确你的创作目标很重要,这样你才能朝着正确的方向进行迭代。这在我们流程的后期会变得越来越重要。在制作原型时,这是一个很好的考虑,但不是至关重要的。就目前而言,如果你原地打转或有点迷失方向也没关系,只要你在制作和学习就行。

It’s important in a playtest to be clear about your creative goals, so that you can iterate in the right direction. This will become increasingly important later in our process. While you’re prototyping, it’s a good consideration but not crucial. For now, it’s okay if you spin in circles or get lost a little bit, as long as you’re making and learning.

这就是为什么将游戏棋子放在你面前的桌子上是如此好:它让你正在探索的想法走向世界,在那里它们可以被更清楚地看到。你可以更轻松地挑选出好的,并在其基础上进行构建或修改。

That’s why the physical fact of game pieces on a table in front of you is so good: it gets the ideas you’re exploring out into the world, where they can be seen more clearly. You can pick out the good ones more easily and build upon them or revise them.

整个开发过程中的物理原型设计    物理原型有助于在构思阶段开始游戏设计,因为它可以帮助您意外发现想要使用的核心游戏机制、叙事和美学。但物理原型在整个预生产和完整生产过程中也很有用,只要可以使用物理原型技术快速、轻松、廉价或彻底地研究开放的设计问题即可。

Physical Prototyping throughout Development    Physical prototypes are good for getting a game design started during the ideation phase, by helping you make sometimes unexpected discoveries about the core game mechanics, narrative, and aesthetics you want to use. But physical prototyping is valuable throughout preproduction and full production too, whenever an open design question can be investigated quickly, easily, cheaply, or thoroughly using physical prototyping techniques.

策略游戏(玩家操纵资源系统)在开发的每个阶段都非常适合物理原型设计。动作游戏和叙事体验的关卡和场景可以通过物理原型轻松快速地模拟出来,这使我们能够回答有关玩家在空间中的流动、视线和资源可用性的详细问题。这使得物理原型在您获得游戏的可运行数字版本后很长时间内都很有用。您可以在进行游戏的“微观设计”时使用物理原型设计(有关这方面的更多信息,请参见第 18 章)。

Strategy games, where the player manipulates systems of resources, lend themselves very easily to physical prototyping at every stage of development. The levels and scenarios of action games and narrative experiences can be mocked-up easily and quickly with physical prototypes, allowing us to answer detailed questions about the player’s flow through space, line of sight, and resource availability. This makes physical prototypes useful long after you’ve got a working digital version of your game. You can use physical prototyping whenever you’re working on the “micro design” of a game (more about this in chapter 18).

我相信几乎所有类型的游戏都可以从创造性地使用物理原型中受益。您必须自己决定物理原型对您的项目有多大用处,以及何时有用。

It’s my belief that almost every type of game can benefit from the inventive use of physical prototyping. You’ll have to decide for yourself how much physical prototyping is useful for your project, and when it’s useful.

数字样机    如果您的目标是制作数字游戏,那么数字原型设计将为构思过程提供强大的下一步,并将直接指导您设计和构建游戏。

Digital Prototyping    If your goal is to make a digital game, then digital prototyping provides a supercharged next step in the ideation process and will lead you directly toward designing and building your game.

概括地说,数字原型设计是使用软件制作可在计算机上运行的游戏原型的过程。您的数字原型可能在个人计算机、手机、平板电脑或游戏机上运行,​​可能带有屏幕和音频输出。它可能使用键盘、鼠标或游戏控制器作为界面,或者使用其他类型的输入:语音识别、注视跟踪或特殊的 alt 控制器。或者它可能在其他类型的计算平台上运行,例如智能手表甚至医疗植入物。您用来构建原型的软件可能易于使用,具有拖放界面,也可能更复杂,需要一些编程知识。

Stated in a general way, digital prototyping is the process of using software to make game prototypes that run on a computer. Maybe your digital prototype runs on a personal computer, a phone, a tablet, or a game console, probably with a screen and audio output. It might use a keyboard, mouse, or game controller for an interface, or some other kind of input: voice recognition, gaze-tracking, or a special alt-controller. Or it might run on some other kind of computing platform, like a smartwatch or even a medical implant. Maybe the software you use to build the prototype is easy to use, with a drag-and-drop interface, or maybe it’s more complex and requires some knowledge of programming.

在所有这些情况下,我们都将使用与制作好玩的原型和物理原型相同的指导原则:我们首先只关注一个玩家活动,尝试找到一些有效且我们想要保留的东西。

In all these cases, we will use the same guidelines that we used for making playful prototypes and physical prototypes: we’ll focus on just one player activity at first, trying to find something that works and that we want to keep.

要制作数字原型,您需要具备一些数字游戏开发方面的先决条件。也许不是很多,但至少是一些。为您提供这种能力超出了本书的范围,但我可以为您提供一些关于如何开始学习数字游戏开发的指导,我将在第 5 章中这样做。

To make a digital prototype, you need some preexisting ability with digital game development. Maybe not a lot, but some. Providing you with that ability is outside the scope of this book, but I can give you some pointers on how to start learning digital game development, and I’ll do so in chapter 5.

每个游戏开发者都是游戏设计师

Every Game Developer Is a Game Designer

在结束本章之前,我想先跟大家解释一下一些术语。你可能已经注意到,我从讨论游戏设计(我在本章的大部分时间里都在使用这个术语)转到了游戏开发。它们是同一件事吗?它们非常相似,但我认为有必要区分一下这两个术语。

To close out this chapter, I’d like to get some terminology straight with you. You might have noticed me switch from talking about game design, a term I’ve used throughout most of this chapter, to mentioning game development. Are they the same thing? They’re very similar, but I think it’s worth distinguishing between the terms.

游戏设计是组成游戏的元素的抽象模式,这些元素会为玩家带来良好的体验。游戏设计师关注的是游戏的概念化和规划过程,尽管这种规划与游戏的构建紧密相连,很难将规划与构建区分开来,正如我们将在本书中看到的那样。

A game’s design is the abstract pattern of elements that make up the game in a way that will produce a good experience for the player. Game designers are concerned with the process of conceptualizing and planning a game, although that planning is tied up with the building of the game in a way that makes it hard to disentangle the planning from the building, as we’ll see throughout this book.

当我们谈论开发数字游戏时,我们指的是使用软件工具、编写代码、制作艺术和音频资产、创建动画和视觉效果以及将所有内容整合成玩家可以打开和玩的东西的过程。因此,游戏开发者可以是艺术家、动画师、软件工程师、音频设计师、作曲家、游戏设计师、作家、用户体验设计师、制作人、质量保证专业人员,也可以属于其他学科。大多数游戏开发者在团队中都会扮演一些主要角色,例如环境艺术家或游戏程序员。有些人的头衔是游戏设计师,他们的角色通常是产生和收集设计理念,并确定游戏的设计——可能是关卡设计和系统设计。

When we talk about developing a digital game, we mean the process of using software tools, writing code, making art and audio assets, creating animations and visual effects, and tying everything together into something that a player can open and play. So a game developer could be an artist, animator, software engineer, audio designer, composer, game designer, writer, user experience designer, producer, quality assurance professional, or could belong to some other discipline. Most game developers will have some primary role on a team, like environment artist or gameplay programmer. Some people have the job title of game designer, and their role is usually to generate and gather design ideas, and to lock down designs for the game—maybe level design and systems designs.

我相信,每一位游戏开发者——无论他们是艺术家、声音设计师、动画师还是程序员——也都是游戏设计师,因为他们在工作中做出的即时决策对游戏设计有着根本性的影响。“魔鬼藏在细节中”,或者“上帝藏在细节中”,也许取决于细节给你带来了多少麻烦。正如设计师 Ray 和 Charles Eames 曾经说过的:“细节不是细节。它们成就了产品。” 6

I believe that every game developer—whether they are an artist, sound designer, animator, or programmer—is also a game designer, because the moment-to-moment decisions they make as they carry out their work have a fundamental impact on the design of the game. “The devil’s in the details,” or “God lives in the details,” perhaps depending on how much trouble the details are giving you. As designers Ray and Charles Eames once said: “The details are not the details. They make the product.”6

对于职位名称中包含“游戏设计师”的人来说,尤其重要的是要记住,事实上,团队中的每个开发人员也都是游戏设计师。团队中的每个人都为游戏设计做出了贡献,最好的游戏设计师意识到了这一点,他们从整个团队收集设计理念,并自己提出创意。游戏设计师的职责是将最好的想法综合成一个连贯的整体。

It’s particularly important for people with “game designer” in their job title to remember that, in fact, every developer on the team is also a game designer. Everyone on the team contributes to the design of the game, and the best game designers realize this, gathering design ideas from all across the team, as well as coming up with ideas themselves. The game designer’s responsibility is to synthesize the best ideas into a coherent whole.

现在我们对游戏原型有了深入的了解,我们将进入下一章,详细讨论构建数字游戏原型的过程。

Now that we have a solid understanding of game prototyping, we’ll move on to the next chapter and a detailed discussion of the process of building a digital game prototype.

  1. 1. Tom Wujec,建一座塔,组建一个团队,2010 年,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= H0_yKBitO8M 。

  2. 1.  Tom Wujec, Build a Tower, Build a Team, 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0_yKBitO8M.

  3. 2. “巴图玩家类型分类法”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types

  4. 2.  “Bartle Taxonomy of Player Types,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types.

  5. 3.Chaim Gingold,“灾难性的原型设计及其他故事”,2011年1月20日,http://www.levitylab.com/blog/2011/01/catastrophic-prototyping-and-other-stories/

  6. 3.  Chaim Gingold, “Catastrophic Prototyping and Other Stories,” January 20, 2011, http://www.levitylab.com/blog/2011/01/catastrophic-prototyping-and-other-stories/.

  7. 4. “2012 年 IndieCade 上的‘Killer Queen’游戏”,https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=9y3OI3KCdYk 。

  8. 4.  “‘Killer Queen’ Game at IndieCade 2012,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9y3OI3KCdYk.

  9. 5. Liz Ryerson,《Problem Attic》,2013 年,https://lizryerson.itch.io/problem-attic

  10. 5.  Liz Ryerson, Problem Attic, 2013, https://lizryerson.itch.io/problem-attic.

  11. 6. Daniel Ostroff,《细节不是细节》,Eames Office,2014 年 9 月 8 日,https://www.eamesoffice.com/blog/the-details-are-not-the-details/

  12. 6.  Daniel Ostroff, “The Details Are Not the Details,” Eames Office, September 8, 2014, https://www.eamesoffice.com/blog/the-details-are-not-the-details/.

 

 

5 制作数字游戏原型

5    Making a Digital Game Prototype

在本章中,我们将讨论制作数字原型的过程,从选择游戏引擎和游戏硬件平台开始。我们将讨论如何构建、测试和迭代数字游戏原型的设计,以及声音提供的创意机会。我们将研究是遵循数字原型引导我们前进的方向还是以其他方式指导我们的方向,并研究数字原型制作过程产生的可交付成果。

In this chapter, we’ll talk about the process of making a digital prototype, starting with choosing a game engine and perhaps a hardware platform for our game. We’ll discuss how we can go about building, playtesting, and iterating on the design of a digital game prototype, and the creative opportunities offered by sound. We’ll look at the question of whether to follow where a digital prototype is leading us or to guide our direction in some other way, and we’ll look at the deliverables that result from a digital prototyping process.

选择和使用游戏引擎

Choosing and Using a Game Engine

当我们决定使用哪种游戏引擎来制作游戏原型(并可能在之后进行开发)时,数字原型制作过程就开始了。游戏引擎是用于构建游戏的软件。有些引擎易于使用,有些则较难学习。大多数引擎由公司制作,有些由志愿者开发者团体制作。许多引擎可免费使用,有些则需要付费。

The digital prototyping process starts when we decide what game engine we are going to use to prototype (and maybe later develop) our game. A game engine is a piece of software used to build games. Some are easy to use, and some are more challenging to learn. Most are made by companies, and some by groups of volunteer developers. Many are free to use, and some require payment.

目前,游戏行业和游戏学术界使用最广泛的游戏引擎是 Unity 和 Unreal Engine。两者都有可供下载的免费版本,都附带实用且不断改进的教程,并且都提供大量功能,为您提供巨大的游戏制作潜力。通过互联网上的一些研究,很容易发现其他游戏引擎。维基百科的“游戏引擎列表”文章是一个很好的起点。1如果您没有做过太多编程,请考虑使用 Twine、Bitsy 或 Emotica。请记住,每个游戏引擎都值得尊重,好的游戏设计总是与创造力和约束有关。过去十年里,我最喜欢的一些游戏都是用易于使用的游戏引擎制作的。

The game engines that are currently the most widely used in both the game industry and game academia are Unity and the Unreal Engine. Both are available as free versions you can download, both come with useful and constantly improving tutorials, and both offer a vast number of features, giving you immense game-making potential. Other game engines are easy to discover with some research on the Internet. Wikipedia’s “List of Game Engines” article is a good place to start.1 If you haven’t done much programming, consider using Twine, Bitsy, or Emotica. Remember that every game engine is worthy of respect, and good game design is always about creativity and constraints. Some of my favorite games of the last ten years have been made in easy-to-use game engines.

如果您想要使用的游戏引擎尚未可用,只需找到一个您今天可以使用的游戏引擎并立即开始构建。作为游戏设计师,我们应该随时准备好使用手头的任何方法来制作原型。请记住你现在所知道的就足以让你探索和表达你的游戏设计想法。

If the game engine you would like to use is not yet available to you, just find a game engine that you can use today and start building immediately. As game designers, we should always be ready to prototype using whatever means are at hand. Remember that what you know how to do right now is enough to allow you to explore and express your game design ideas.

一旦你选择了引擎,下一步就是学习如何使用它。如果你能通过阅读网页和书籍、观看视频和在论坛上发帖来学习如何使用软件,那么你前进的道路就很清晰了。你所需要做的就是留出时间去学习,你很快就会取得进步。

Once you’ve chosen an engine, your next step is learning how to use it. If you are able to learn how to use software by reading web pages and books, watching videos, and posting on forums, then your path ahead is clear. All you need to do is to set aside the time to learn, and you’ll quickly make progress.

如果你觉得独自学习很困难,你可以去上课或参加研讨会,在你所在地区找一个独立游戏开发者聚会小组,或者找一个愿意教你的朋友。创造一个环境,让你可以定期与比你更有技能、愿意分享或交换专业知识的人见面,你的知识和技能很快就会开始成倍增长。如果你想要更多的帮助和灵感,我推荐安娜·安特罗皮的优秀著作《电子游戏杂志的崛起。2

If you find it hard to learn in isolation, you can take a class or go to a workshop, find an indie game developer meet-up group in your area, or find a friend who will teach you. Create an environment where you can regularly meet in person with other people who have more skill than you and are willing to share or trade expertise, and your knowledge and skills will soon start to grow exponentially. If you want more help and inspiration, I recommend Anna Anthropy’s excellent book, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters.2

选择操作系统和硬件平台

Choosing an Operating System and a Hardware Platform

此时,您还有另一个选择:您的原型将在哪种硬件平台和操作系统上运行?您可以选择使用 Windows、macOS 或 Linux 为 PC 或 Mac 制作游戏。您可以使用 Android 或 iOS 为手机或平板电脑制作游戏,也可以为使用专有操作系统的游戏机制作游戏。某些游戏引擎可轻松将您的游戏导出到多个操作系统和硬件平台。

You have another choice to make around this time: what hardware platform and operating system will your prototype run on? You can choose to make games for PC or Mac using Windows, macOS, or Linux. You might make games for a phone or a tablet using Android or iOS or for a game console that uses a proprietary operating system. Some game engines make it easy to export your game to multiple operating systems and hardware platforms.

您可以开发虚拟现实、增强现实或混合现实游戏。您可以制作一款可以在健康追踪器、手表或耳机上玩的游戏。伊恩·博格斯特 (Ian Bogost) 在他的著作《Play Anything》中指出,这个世界充满了游乐场,只要我们能识别它们,我们就可以尽情玩乐。3鼓励您将接触到的每个游戏引擎和硬件平台都视为一个游乐场,充满兴趣、情感、挑战和反思的潜力。

You could develop games for virtual reality, augmented reality, or mixed reality. You could make a game to be played on a health tracker or a watch or with some earbuds. In his book Play Anything, Ian Bogost argues that the world is full of playgrounds, ready for us to have fun with if we can recognize them.3 I encourage you to regard every game engine and hardware platform that you approach as a playground, rich with potential for interest, emotion, challenge, and reflection.

根据您的游戏和团队,尽早选择硬件平台可能很重要。正如游戏设计师兼制作人 Alan Dang 向我指出的那样:如果您正在考虑使用一个带来很多限制的平台(例如专门的输入或输出方法),那么您就越需要加快选择速度。

Depending on your game and team, it might be important to choose your hardware platform as early as possible. As game designer and producer Alan Dang pointed out to me: if you’re thinking about using a platform that brings a lot of constraints—such as specialized input or output methods—the greater your need will be to hurry up and choose.

将原型构建为玩具,而不是游戏

Build Your Prototype as a Toy, Not a Game

正如我在上一章中提到的,人们在开始制作原型时有时会犯一个错误:对于他们的第一个数字原型,他们尝试构建一个完整的游戏。他们会创造一个玩家角色和一些敌人。他们会添加一个计分器和一种获得积分的方法。他们会设计一套规则和叙事框架,并设置游戏的开始、中间和结束。

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, people sometimes make a mistake when they start prototyping: for their first digital prototype, they try and build a complete game. They make a player-character and some enemies. They’ll add a score counter and a way to earn points. They’ll devise a set of rules and a narrative frame, and set up a beginning, middle, and end of the game.

我理解这种从一开始就详细规划游戏的冲动。但这样做是本末倒置。从我作为游戏设计师的经验中,我知道正确的道路是一步一步来,对我来说,当我进行数字原型设计时,这通常意味着从制作玩具开始。

I understand this impulse to start to plan a game in detail from the very beginning. But doing so puts the cart before the horse. I know from my experience as a game designer that the correct path is to take one step at a time, and for me, when I’m digital prototyping, that often means starting by building a toy.

玩具是一种能引起玩耍的物品。它可以是商店里买来的玩具,比如洋娃娃或球,也可以是孩子在富有想象力的手中发现的物品,比如水桶或自行车轮胎。对于我们目前的讨论来说,玩具的重要性在于它是一个系统,它要么具有某种机械、互动元素,要么具有某种叙事元素,或者两者兼而有之。

A toy is an object that elicits play. It could be a store-bought toy like a doll or a ball, or it could, in the imaginative hands of a child, be a found object like a bucket or a bicycle tire. The important thing about the toy, for our present discussion, is that it’s a system that either has some mechanical, interactive element, some narrative element, or both.

例如,球被扔到地上会弹起,我们可以试着在弹起后接住它——我们可以很容易地把它想象成一个卡通人物,每次弹起都会说“哎哟”。玩偶可以摆姿势,站立和跌倒,并且具有来自其视觉设计的特定叙事特征:它可能看起来像十九世纪的医生或三十世纪的太空飞行员。水桶可以用作篮子或像头盔一样戴在身上。空自行车轮胎可以从山上滚下来或像飞盘一样扔出去。

For example, a ball will bounce when thrown at the floor, and we can try to catch it after the bounce—we could easily imagine it as a cartoon character that says “ouch” on every bounce. A doll can be posed, will stand and fall, and has a certain narrative character that comes from its visual design: it might look like a nineteenth-century doctor or a thirtieth-century space pilot. A bucket can be used as a basket or worn like a helmet. An empty bicycle tire can be rolled down a hill or thrown like a frisbee.

这些与玩具的互动听起来很像我们在上一章中讨论的玩家活动,不是吗?你可能不习惯将我们玩玩具时所做的事情视为你所玩的数字游戏的基本组成部分,但它们有可能成为游戏玩法的原子动词。摆出玩偶的姿势或扔球在哲学上与我们在商业视频游戏中进行的奔跑、打斗和收集没有什么不同。

These interactions with a toy sound like the player activities we discussed in the last chapter, don’t they? You might not be used to thinking about the things we do when we play with a toy as the fundamental building blocks of the digital games you play, but they have potential as the atomic verbs of gameplay. Posing a doll or throwing a ball is philosophically no different from the running, fighting, and collecting that we do in a commercial videogame.

因此,从构建玩具开始您的数字原型设计吧——小型、简单、好玩的系统。您要寻找的是游戏中使用的最基本的动词和玩家活动。同时,要留意与您心中的叙事想法完美契合的动词和活动。例如,“飞翔”这个动词与飞行员、宇航员和鸟类的故事很相配。

So begin your digital prototyping by building toys—small, simple, playful systems. What you’re looking for are the most fundamental verbs and player activities that you will use in your game. At the same time, be on the lookout for verbs and activities that dovetail nicely with the narrative ideas you have in mind. For example, “to fly” is a verb that goes well with stories about pilots, astronauts, and birds.

也许你会从一些经过实践检验的东西开始,比如一个可以跑和跳的角色,一块可以放置建筑物的带有光标的土地,或者一个网格,网格中有可以滑动的物体,当三个物体排成一行时,它们就会消失。你可以在这些熟悉的玩家活动中添加自己的创意,或者你也可以尝试新的游戏设计方向,制作一种在被弹动时会撒出种子的植物,一个在挥动时会产生肥皂泡的铁环,或者一种在摇晃时会发出奇怪声音的乐器。

Perhaps you’ll start with something tried and true, like a character that can run and jump, a piece of land with a cursor that can place buildings, or a grid with objects that can slide around and that will disappear when three are lined up. You could add your own spin to these familiar player activities, or you might strike out in a new game design direction, making a plant that throws out seeds when it’s flicked, a hoop that makes soap bubbles when it’s waved, or a musical instrument that makes strange sounds when you shake it.

尽量让你的原型专注于探索玩家活动是否 (a) 能够创造一种感觉并看起来很有趣,(b) 是否易于玩家理解和使用,以及 (c) 是否对你想要制作的游戏有用。根据你认为合适的方式调整这些优先级,但始终要清楚你试图通过每个原型弄清楚什么。

Try to keep your prototypes focused on exploring whether the player activities (a) can create a feeling and appear interesting, (b) are easy for players to understand and use, and (c) could be useful in the kind of game you want to make. Adjust these priorities as you see fit, but always stay clear about what you’re trying to figure out with each prototype.

声音对于数字游戏原型的重要性

The Importance of Sound for Digital Game Prototypes

有些人在制作原型时往往会忽略声音设计。这是另一个大错误。作为游戏设计师,我们通常只有三种感官方式与玩家交流:视觉、听觉和触觉。4虽然不是每个人都能实现振动游戏控制器或移动设备的触摸式“触觉”设计,但我们大多数人都可以在数字原型中实现声音,出于多种原因,我们应该确保这样做。

Some people have a tendency to neglect sound design when they’re prototyping. That’s another big mistake. As game designers, we usually only have three sensory modalities with which to communicate with our players: sight, hearing, and touch.4 While not everyone can implement the touch-based “haptic” design of a vibrating game controller or mobile device, most of us can implement sound in our digital prototypes, and we should make sure that we do so, for a number of reasons.

《游戏感觉:游戏设计师的虚拟感觉指南》中,史蒂夫·斯温克讨论了声音在塑造我们对具有物理属性的虚拟空间的体验方面所起的重要作用。他说,“音效可以完全改变游戏中物体的感知”,并举了两个圆圈相向移动然后相离的动画示例。5没有任何声音,圆圈看起来就像刚刚擦肩而过。在恰当的时刻加上“boing!”音效,它们突然看起来像橡皮球互相弹跳。

In Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation, Steve Swink discusses the vital role that sound plays in shaping our experience of a virtual space as having physical properties. He says, “A sound effect can completely change the perception of an object in a game,” and gives an example of an animation of two circles moving toward and then away from each other.5 Without any sound, the circles look like they just pass each other by. With the addition of a “boing!” sound effect at just the right moment, they suddenly look like rubber balls bouncing off each other.

声音设计可以告诉你角色穿的是运动鞋还是金属靴。它可以告诉你箭是从石头还是冰上弹起的,它肯定会让你的界面选择感到满意或恼人。史蒂夫·斯温克继续描述了声音设计的细微差别如何传达信息,不仅仅是关于物体或事件,还包括事件发生的空间:“如果那把巨大的锤子击中地面,声音回荡,传达给玩家的感觉是,这种撞击发生在一个巨大的仓库或其他巨大的空旷的室内空间内。如果撞击被消音,听起来更像是撞击外面的地面。” 6

Sound design can tell you whether a character is wearing sneakers or metal boots. It can tell you whether your arrow bounced off stone or ice, and it will certainly make your interface selections feel satisfying or annoying. Steve Swink goes on to describe the way that nuances of sound design can convey information not just about objects or an event but about the space that the event takes place in: “If that massive hammer hits the ground and the sound echoes and reverberates, the sense conveyed to the player is that this impact happened inside a giant warehouse or other massive, empty, interior space. If the impact is muffled, it will sound more like striking the ground outside.”6

声音的作用远不止这些。奥斯卡获奖声音设计师 Randy Thom 在其精彩文章《为声音设计电影》中列出了声音为电影以及游戏及其数字原型带来的十三种不同的“天赋”:

That’s not all that sound can do. In his excellent article “Designing a Movie for Sound,” Academy Award–winning sound designer Randy Thom lists thirteen different “talents” that sound contributes to film and, by extension, to games and their digital prototypes:

音乐、对话和音效都可以完成以下任何一项工作,甚至更多:

Music, dialogue, and sound effects can each do any of the following jobs, and many more:

  • 暗示一种情绪,唤起一种感觉
  • suggest a mood, evoke a feeling
  • 设定步调
  • set a pace
  • 表示地理位置
  • indicate a geographical locale
  • 表示某个历史时期
  • indicate a historical period
  • 阐明情节
  • clarify the plot
  • 定义一个字符
  • define a character
  • 将原本不相关的想法、人物、地点、图像或时刻联系起来
  • connect otherwise unconnected ideas, characters, places, images, or moments
  • 增强或减弱现实感
  • heighten realism or diminish it
  • 增加或减少歧义
  • heighten ambiguity or diminish it
  • 引起对细节的注意,或远离它
  • draw attention to a detail, or away from it
  • 表示时间的变化
  • indicate changes in time
  • 平滑镜头或场景之间的突然变化
  • smooth otherwise abrupt changes between shots or scenes
  • 强调过渡以达到戏剧效果
  • emphasize a transition for dramatic effect
  • 描述声学空间
  • describe an acoustic space
  • 惊吓或抚慰
  • startle or soothe
  • 夸大行动或调解行动7
  • exaggerate action or mediate it7

Steve Swink 还在《Game Feel》中指出,有趣的是,声音并不像图像那样受现实主义的约束。电影声音设计的学生很早就知道,我们所知道的许多标志性音效并不与现实紧密相关,而是通过诗意的共鸣和惯例而采用的。当你想到电影中有人在雪地上行走时听到的清脆的“嘎吱”声时,你实际上是在想有人碾碎一个皮袋玉米淀粉的声音,这是很久以前由一位富有创新精神的、不知名的电影拟音设计师建立的惯例。正如 Steve Swink 所说:

Steve Swink also points out in Game Feel that, interestingly, sound isn’t bound by realism in the way that images usually are. Students of filmic sound design learn early on that many of the iconic sound effects that we know aren’t tightly tied to reality but are adopted by poetic resonance and by convention. When you think of the crisp “crump” sound that you’ve heard whenever someone walks on snow in a movie, you’re actually thinking of the sound of someone crushing a leather pouch of cornstarch, a convention established long ago by an innovative and unknown movie Foley sound designer. As Steve Swink says:

《块魂》中宇宙之王的录音,以及《托尼霍克 3》中特殊动作完成后的管弦乐,都证明了将意想不到的音效映射到特定事件上可以产生令人愉悦的效果。这些与它们试图描绘的事物的现实无关,但它们让人感到满意。就像在动画片中一样,没有必要将你对如何应用音效的思考限制在对现实的模拟上。你可以用与物体表面现实截然不同的噪音来传达一种物理性的印象。8

The record scratch for the King of All Cosmos speaks in Katamari Damacy or the orchestral hit when a special move is completed in Tony Hawk 3 prove that mapping an unexpected sound effect to a particular event can have delightful results. These have nothing to do with the reality of the things they are attempting to portray, but they feel satisfying. As in a cartoon, it’s not necessary to limit your thinking about how to apply a sound effect to the emulation of reality. You can convey an impression of physicality with a noise much different from the apparent reality of the object.8

所以,这就是我们应该将声音设计作为​​数字原型制作过程的一部分的原因之一:它为我们的游戏开辟了广阔的可能体验,超越了听觉,延伸到我们对空间、质量、摩擦、动量和其他物理特性的感知。

So, this is one reason why we should make sound design a part of our digital prototyping process: it opens up a huge vista of possible experience for our game that reaches beyond the auditory and into our perception of space, mass, friction, momentum, and other physical properties.

在数字原型中加入声音的另一个重要原因与情感有关。我刚加入 Crystal Dynamics 时,曾听人说过“眼睛与大脑相连,而耳朵与心灵相连”。我忘了是谁说的,但我从未忘记他们的话。他们的观点是,在电影和游戏中,虽然画面和声音都传达了逻辑情感信息,但画面本身往往不太具有情感色彩,而声音设计在塑造情感体验方面发挥着巨大作用。举个例子,请看克里斯托弗·鲁尔 (Christopher Rule) 的 1 分钟长电影《惊声尖叫玛丽》 ,这是迪士尼 1964 年电影《欢乐满人间》的重新剪辑版预告片 采用新的声音设计,将儿童故事重塑为一部恐怖惊悚片。9可怕的玛丽》中,你会听到声音设计和音乐在传达信息和创造情感方面所发挥的重要作用。

Another important reason to include sound in a digital prototype relates to emotion. Once, early in my time at Crystal Dynamics, I heard someone say that “the eye is connected to the brain, but the ear is connected to the heart.” I forget who said it, but I have never forgotten their words. They were making the point that in films and games, while picture and sound both convey logical and emotional information, the picture tends to be less emotionally charged on its own, while sound design plays a huge role in shaping emotional experience. For an example of this, take a look at Christopher Rule’s minute-long film, Scary Mary, a recut trailer for Disney’s 1964 film Mary Poppins with new sound design that recasts the children’s story as a terrifying thriller.9 In Scary Mary you’ll hear the important role that both sound design and music can play in conveying information and creating emotion.

Mark Cerny 最近告诉我,他非常重视 3D 音频技术在游戏中的重要性,以及它所带来的增强的局部性和临场感。3D 音频技术模仿声波与环境相互作用的方式;局部性与感知空间中发出噪音的物体的位置有关,而临场感则是真正处于特定环境中的心理印象。正如 Mark 所说,“局部性实际上会影响设计(你确切地知道你看不到的敌人在哪里),而临场感与你与游戏的情感关系有关。”

Mark Cerny recently told me that he has a strong focus on the importance of 3D audio technology in games, and the enhanced locality and presence it brings. 3D audio technologies mimic the way that sound waves interact with an environment; locality relates to being able to perceive the positions of noise-making objects in space, while presence is the psychological impression of actually being in a certain environment. As Mark says, the “locality actually affects the design (you know exactly where the enemy you can’t see is) and the presence is connected to your emotional relationship with the game.”

在 2014 年的 GDC Microtalk 上,作曲家 Austin Wintory 建议,与其像许多游戏开发商那样在项目后期才引入作曲家,不如在创作过程的一开始就引入他们,这样会更好。10我们在游戏项目的生命周期早期就将作曲家引入游戏项目时,新的创作机会就会出现,因为作曲家的专业知识可以与游戏设计师的专业知识交织在一起。将音乐和声音放入大多数数字原型中非常容易,通过这样做,您将学到很多东西。

In his 2014 GDC Microtalk, composer Austin Wintory suggested that instead of bringing in a composer late in a project, as many game developers regrettably do, it would be excellent to bring them in at the very beginning of the creative process.10 New creative opportunities open up when we bring a composer into a game project early in its life cycle, as the composer’s expertise can intertwine with that of the game designer. It’s very easy to drop music and sound into most digital prototypes, and you’ll learn an enormous amount by doing so.

在数字原型上进行游戏测试和迭代

Playtesting and Iterating on a Digital Prototype

一旦你有了可以让玩家做某事的原型,你就必须对其进行游戏测试。我尽量不花超过一个小时的时间来构建游戏玩法,然后运行游戏,找一个路人,让他们玩几分钟。游戏设计师非常善于评估游戏中哪些部分是可行的。我们想到一些看起来可能很有趣或有趣的东西,我们在游戏引擎中构建它,然后尝试它。也许它很好,我们喜欢它。也许我们认为它很无聊和愚蠢,或者根本行不通。在这两种情况下,我们都应该对我们构建的东西进行游戏测试。

As soon as you have a prototype in which a player can do something, you must playtest it. I try not to spend more than a single hour building gameplay before I run the game, grab a passerby, and ask them to play for a few minutes. Game designers are pretty good at evaluating what’s working in their games. We think of something that seems like it might be fun or interesting, we build it in our game engine, and we try it out. Maybe it’s good, and we like it. Maybe we think it’s boring and stupid, or otherwise doesn’t work. In both cases, we should playtest what we built.

我们理解自己所构建的东西的优缺点的能力,在很大程度上受到我们构建它这一事实的限制。我们思考了很长时间,并且了解它的工作原理。也许我们的原型对我们来说很有趣,因为我们对它非常了解。其他人可能会立刻感到无聊或卡住。另一方面,也许我们认为我们的原型很无聊,因为我们对它非常了解。如果我们把它交给一个完全不了解它的人,我们可能会发现他们觉得它很有趣、令人愉快和好玩。

Our own ability to understand what’s good and bad about something we’ve built is radically limited by the fact that we built it. We’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and we understand how it works in intimate detail. Maybe our prototype is only fun to us because we understand it so well. Someone else might get bored or stuck straightaway. On the other hand, maybe we think our prototype is boring because we understand it so well. If we give it to someone who doesn’t know it at all, we might discover that they find it interesting, pleasurable, and fun.

我们将在第 12 章中深入探讨如何充分利用游戏测试,但现在,当您进行游戏测试时:

We’ll take an in-depth look at getting the most out of playtests in chapter 12, but for now, when you’re playtesting:

  • 不要解释太多。如果可以的话就不要解释任何事情。
  • Don’t explain too much. Don’t explain anything if you can get away with it.
  • 不要帮助你的游戏测试员任何事或者以其他方式干扰他们的工作。
  • Don’t help your playtester at all or otherwise interfere with what they do.
  • 观察游戏测试员的游戏。注意他们做什么,听他们说什么。
  • Watch your playtesters play. Notice what they do and listen to what they say.
  • 记录下他们在演奏时你所看到和听到的内容。
  • Take lots of notes about what you see and hear while they’re playing.
  • 当你在游戏测试员玩完游戏后与他们交谈时,不要急于解释任何事情。相反,要问一些问题,让他们了解他们刚刚经历的事情。
  • When you’re talking to your playtester after they’ve played, resist the urge to explain anything. Instead, ask questions that draw them out about the experience they’ve just had.

每次游戏测试之后,包括您在构建原型时进行的非常简短的游戏测试,都需要评估测试结果并迭代您的设计。

After every playtest, including the very short playtests that you do when you’re building a prototype, it’s time to evaluate the results of the test and then iterate on your design.

  • 由于成功了,应该强调什么?
  • What should be amplified because it was successful?
  • 什么需要修复才能最终发挥作用?
  • What needs fixing because it might eventually work?
  • 什么应该被删除,因为它不起作用并且可能永远不会起作用?
  • What should be removed because it isn’t working and probably won’t ever work?

这里可能会有一些艰难的决定。作为一名游戏设计师,你成长得越快,你对原型潜力的判断就会越好。一旦你决定了要保留、更改和放弃什么,就对原型进行另一轮工作,然后再次测试。这个计划-制作-游戏测试-评估-重复的迭代周期将贯穿你的游戏开发的大部分过程。

There can be some tough calls to make here. The more you grow as a game designer, the better your judgment will become about the potential of your prototypes. Once you’ve decided what to keep, change, and chuck, do another round of work on your prototype, and then test it again. This iterative cycle of plan-make-playtest-evaluate-repeat is one that will remain with you throughout most of your game’s development.

在专业环境中,最好每周或尽可能频繁地进行“朋友和家人”游戏测试。在课堂环境中,每周进行一次“抢椅子”游戏测试,每轮时间都很短,以便尽可能多地收集有关每个游戏或原型的反馈。

In a professional environment, it’s good to run “friends and family” playtests every week or as often as you can manage. In a classroom setting, run weekly “musical chairs” playtest sessions with very short rounds, to get as much feedback as possible about every game or prototype.

我们应该制作多少个数字原型?

How Many Digital Prototypes Should We Make?

答案很简单:你应该在分配给创意的时间里制作尽可能多的不同数字原型。对于想要创新和发现新游戏类型和新游戏风格的设计师来说尤其如此。对于有数字游戏制作经验的人来说,创建一个强大的玩家活动原型可能只需要几个小时——甚至可能只需要二十分钟。如果你专注于非常简单的原型,你可能一天就能制作出大量的原型。

The answer to this is simple: you should make as many different digital prototypes as you can in the time that you have allocated for ideation. This is especially true for designers who want to innovate and discover new types of games and new styles of play. For someone with digital game-making experience, it might only take a few hours to create a strong player activity prototype—and maybe as little as twenty minutes. If you stay focused on very simple prototypes, you might be able to make a huge number of them in a single day.

有时,你会立即发现第一个数字原型带来的金矿。你会发现一个玩家活动效果非常好,你只想追随它的脚步。有时,制作一个你和你的游戏测试员都喜欢的原型需要一段时间,这没关系。重要的是不要气馁,继续创造新的东西。你寻找的金矿最终会出现,要么是晴天霹雳,要么只是因为你和你的游戏测试员更喜欢你的一个原型。

Sometimes you’ll strike gold straightaway, with your very first digital prototype. You’ll find a player activity that works so well that you just know you want to follow where it leads. Sometimes it will take a while to make a prototype that you and your playtesters like, and that’s okay. It’s important not to get discouraged and to keep making new things. The seam of gold that you’re looking for will eventually appear, either with a bolt from the blue or just because you and your playtesters like one of your prototypes better than the others.

何时遵循原型引导

When to Follow Where a Prototype Leads

无论何时,当你制作出你喜欢的数字原型时,你都会有一个选择。你是否应该利用剩余的构思时间继续迭代成功的原型?还是应该探索一些截然不同的方向?在成功的原型上进行迭代可能更安全,但我宁愿多探索,尤其是在构思阶段的早期。这种决策的不确定性是创造力既可怕又令人兴奋的部分原因。找到适合你的工作风格的平衡点取决于你。

Whenever you’ve made a digital prototype you like, you’ll have a choice to make. Should you use your remaining ideation time to continue to iterate on the successful prototype? Or should you explore some wildly different directions? It might be safer to iterate on a successful prototype, but I like to err on the side of more exploration, especially early in the ideation phase. The uncertainty around this kind of decision is part of what makes creativity both scary and exciting. It’s up to you to find the right balance for your working style.

我经常看到人们丢弃运行良好的原型,他们通常是出于自负。他们不喜欢自己制作的游戏,因为它不符合他们对游戏的期望。也许他们认为它不够酷或不够创新,尽管如果再多做一点工作,它有可能兼具这两种功能。即使他们的游戏测试者玩得很开心、想玩更多,或者被他们玩过的游戏感动,他们还是会把它扔掉。

I’ve often seen people discard prototypes that are working very well, and they usually do it out of ego. They don’t like what they made because it doesn’t match their expectation of what they thought their game would be like. Maybe they judge it as not cool or innovative enough, even though it has the potential to be both with a little more work. They junk it even though their playtesters were having a wonderful time, wanted to play more, or were moved by what they played.

防范这种情况。是的,自我意识对于有创造力的人来说是必不可少的:它是创造性愿景的源泉。但如果动机不明智,它很容易破坏或阻碍我们的进程。在构思过程中,我们必须将愿景与对新想法的开放态度相协调。这需要努力,但发展这种必不可少的创造力的唯一方法就是锻炼它。

Guard against this. Yes, ego is essential for creative people: it’s a source of creative vision. But it can easily derail or block our process, if it’s unwisely motivated. During ideation we have to reconcile our vision with our openness to new ideas. This takes effort, but the only way to develop this essential creative muscle is to work it.

构思交付成果:原型构建

Ideation Deliverable: Prototype Builds

可交付成果是项目开发人员在开发过程中向其利益相关者(负责运营和/或为项目提供资金的人员)提供的东西。我们的原型是我们将在整个有趣的生产过程中制作的几个可交付成果中的第一个。

A deliverable is a thing provided by a project’s developers to its stakeholders (the people running and/or financing the project) as part of a development process. Our prototypes are the first of several deliverables that we’ll make throughout our playful production process.

将原型作为可交付成果交付的最佳方式是创建可执行文件。此可执行文件允许我们在运行文件时播放原型,而制作可执行文件在软件开发人员中被称为制作“构建”。制作构建是整个开发过程的重要组成部分。细节因引擎而异,您正在使用的游戏引擎将提供有关制作构建的文档(尽管并非每个引擎都可以或需要制作构建)。

The best way to deliver a prototype as a deliverable is by creating an executable file. This executable allows us to play the prototype when the file is run, and making the executable is known among software developers as making a “build.” Making a build is an important part of the overall development process. The details vary from engine to engine, and the game engine that you’re working in will offer documentation about making one (though not every engine can or needs to make builds).

出于多种原因,无论您是将作品发送给游戏发行商、项目经理、专业同行还是教授,交付构建版本都比交付项目文件夹更好。构建版本更简单、更方便处理 - 只需单击几下,您就可以玩游戏。构建版本的文件大小通常也比项目文件夹小得多。

It’s better to deliver builds instead of project folders for a number of reasons, whether you’re sending your work to a game publisher, project manager, professional peer, or professor. A build is easier and more convenient to deal with—in a couple of clicks, you can be playing the game. A build is also usually much smaller than a project folder in terms of file size.

虽然我从不丢弃旧原型的项目文件夹,但我会保留原型构建的存档。当我以后想查看旧原型以获得灵感或研究时,找到并运行构建比加载项目文件更容易(只要旧构建仍可运行)。

While I never throw away the project folders for my old prototypes, I keep an archive of prototype builds alongside them. When I want to look at an old prototype later for inspiration or research, it’s easier to find and run a build than to load up a project file (as long as the old build still runs).

构建说明

Build Notes

对于我们创建的每个构建,我们都应该做一些构建注释。这些注释对于我们发送构建的任何人以及我们自己以后回头查看构建时都很有用。在专业项目中,构建的注释可能会长达数页,并且可能详细描述创建构建所做的所有工作。对于原型,提供以下内容就足够了。

For every build that we create, we should make some build notes. These will be useful for anyone we send the build to and for ourselves if we go back to look at the build later. On professional projects, the notes for a build can run to many pages and might describe in detail all the work that was done to create the build. For prototypes, it should be enough to provide the following.

A输入描述对于任何尝试玩这个游戏的人来说都很有价值,特别是当原型没有通过游戏来教授其控制时。

A description of the inputs is valuable to anyone trying to play it, especially if the prototype doesn’t teach its controls through gameplay.

保持归属列表对您使用的任何发现和第三方资产进行版权保护是一个好习惯。您可能不会发布您的原型,并且允许在个人作品和学术界有限使用受版权保护的材料,但当受版权保护的资产存在问题时,您不知道您的哪些原型可能会成为成功的商业作品。请记住,发现的资产只有在具有适当的许可证(如 Creative Commons 或 Open)或受到合理使用的情况下才能用于商业用途。在您的项目文件夹中搜索您在互联网上找到的东西的许可证状态并不好玩。如果您在进行过程中保留找到的资产列表,您将节省以后的宝贵时间。

Keeping a list of attributions for any found and third-party assets that you’re using is a good habit to get into. You’re probably not going to publish your prototypes, and some limited use of copyrighted materials is permitted for personal work and in academia, but there’s no knowing which of your prototypes might turn into a successful commercial work, when the presence of copyrighted assets would be a problem. Remember, found assets can only be used commercially if they have an appropriate license like Creative Commons or Open, or if they’re subject to fair use. It’s no fun to have to hunt through your project folder seeking out the license statuses of the things you found on the Internet. If you keep a list of the found assets as you go along, you’ll save yourself valuable time later on.

其他说明可能很有用——例如,告诉玩家原型是否是开放式的或者是否有一些可以达到的目标。

Additional instructions can be useful—for example, to tell the player if the prototype is open-ended or has some goal that can be reached.

记录以下事项很重要学分从项目一开始,就应该为您的游戏设定一个信用标准。除非在特殊且经过仔细协商的情况下,否则,即使只为项目做了少量工作的人也应该获得信用。游戏行业一直存在不公平地抹去人们对游戏的贡献的大问题,每个负责任的游戏设计师都应该努力解决这个问题。国际游戏开发者协会已经制作了一份有用的信用标准指南,您可以在信用过程中使用它。11

It’s important to keep a list of the credits for your game, starting from the very beginning of the project. People who do even a small amount of work on a project should be credited, except under special and carefully negotiated circumstances. The game industry has had a big problem with the unfair erasure of people’s contributions to games, and every responsible game designer should work to counteract this problem. The International Game Developers Association has produced a useful Crediting Standards Guide that you can use in your crediting process.11

杰作综合症

Masterpiece Syndrome

你可能听说过杰作综合症,即富有创造力的人对下一个项目兴奋不已,以至于不堪重负。当一个项目比你之前做过的任何项目都大且可能更好时,杰作综合症就会出现,无论是你制作的第一款专业游戏还是大学论文项目。

You might have heard of masterpiece syndrome, where creative people get so excited about their next project that they become overwhelmed by the responsibility. Masterpiece syndrome often kicks in when a project is bigger and potentially better than any you’ve worked on before, whether it’s your first professionally made game or a university thesis project.

杰作综合症类似于我们在第 1 章中讨论的白纸问题。人们被制作什么和如何制作的看似无限的选择所困扰。你希望这个游戏成为你做过的最好的游戏,成为经典,成为现代杰作(至少对你来说)。但压力如此之大,以至于会让你无能为力,尤其是当你开始将你正在制作的东西与你喜欢的游戏设计师制作的所有杰作进行比较时。

Masterpiece syndrome is similar to the blank-sheet-of-paper problem we discussed in chapter 1. People become paralyzed by the seemingly infinite options for what to make and how to make it. You want this game to be the best thing you’ve ever made, an instant classic, a modern masterpiece (for you, at least). But the pressure is so intense that it can be incapacitating, especially if you start to compare the things you’re making to all of the masterpieces made by the game designers you love.

为了让大家预防杰作综合症,我引用了《美国生活》中伊拉·格拉斯关于“差距”的这句名言:

In an attempt to inoculate people against masterpiece syndrome, I give them this quote about “the gap,” from Ira Glass of This American Life fame:

没人会告诉初学者这一点;我希望有人能告诉我。我们所有从事创意工作的人,都是因为我们有良好的品味。但存在差距。在最初几年里,你做的东西并不是那么好。它试图变得更好,它有潜力,但事实并非如此。但你的品味,让你进入这个行业的东西,仍然是杀手级的。而你的品味就是你的作品让你失望的原因。

很多人永远无法度过这个阶段,他们放弃了。我认识的大多数从事有趣、创造性工作的人都经历了多年的这种状态。我们知道我们的工作没有我们想要的那种特别的东西。我们都经历过这种情况。如果你刚刚起步或者你还处于这个阶段,你必须知道这是正常的,你能做的最重要的事情就是多做工作。

给自己设定一个截止日期,这样你每周就能完成一个故事。只有完成大量的工作,你才能缩小差距,你的工作才会和你的抱负一样好。我花了比我见过的任何人都更长的时间来弄清楚如何做到这一点。这需要一段时间。花点时间很正常。你只需要努力奋斗。12

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners; I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you.

A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.12

应对杰作综合症的正确方法是少想、多做、接受失败。无畏失败是我游戏设计理念的核心部分。如果你的一个原型不起作用——没关系。继续构建下一个。如果你制作了很多原型,那么在你构思阶段时间用完的那一天,其中一个会脱颖而出成为最好的,你可以在下一个项目阶段继续研究它——或者它的变体。

The right way to deal with masterpiece syndrome is to think less, act more, and embrace failure. Being fearless about failing is a central part of my game design philosophy. If one of your prototypes doesn’t work—that’s fine. Just move on to building the next thing. If you make a lot of prototypes, then on the day that you run out of ideation phase time, one of them will stand out as the best, and you can keep working on it—or a variation of it—in the next project phase.

原型游戏测试的情感层面

The Emotional Side of Prototype Playtests

原型游戏测试通常具有美妙的节日氛围,在我的课堂上,很高兴看到许多有趣、实验性、创新的软件出现。然而,原型游戏测试也会带来一些焦虑。人们在时间压力下完成工作,可能正处于某种杰作综合症中。如果你做得对,游戏测试可能会非常痛苦。当游戏测试员陷入困境而你无法帮助他们时,你会感到痛苦,当有人不喜欢你的游戏时,你的感受可能很难处理。

Prototype playtests usually have a wonderful, festival atmosphere, and in my classes it’s great to see lots of playful, experimental, innovative software showing up. However, prototype playtests can also have some anxiety attached to them. People are bringing in work that they’ve made under time pressure, and might be sitting on some masterpiece syndrome. If you’re doing it right, playtesting can be pretty painful. It’s agonizing when a playtester gets stuck and you can’t help them, and the feelings that you have when someone doesn’t like your game can be difficult to deal with.

我会留意那些对原型游戏测试过程(或整个原型制作过程)感到不满的人,并为他们提供支持。我会指出我喜欢他们作品的地方,并提供一些建设性的批评意见,这样他们就会开始放松下来,看到自己作品的价值。

I try to look out for anyone who isn’t feeling good about the prototype playtesting process (or the prototyping process overall) and offer them some support. I point out the things that I like about their work, as well as offering some constructive critique, and they will often start to relax and see the value in what they’ve made.

我总是鼓励设计师在需要的时候寻求这种支持。如果设计就像 Tom Wujec 所说的那样一种接触性运动,那么它就相当混乱,在经历复杂、充满情感的游戏过程中,我们有责任对自己和彼此保持友善、富有同情心、支持和尊重设计和开发。寻求帮助可能很难,但忍受这样做带来的不适是合作者和领导者的一项基本技能。

I always encourage designers to seek out this kind of support whenever they need it. If design is a contact sport as Tom Wujec says, then it’s rather rough-and-tumble, and we owe it to ourselves and each other to be kind, compassionate, supportive, and respectful as we go through the complex, emotionally charged process that is game design and development. It can be hard to ask for help, but tolerating the discomfort that comes with doing so is an essential skill for collaborators and leaders alike.

关于原型设计,我能给你的最好的一般建议就是全身心投入其中,充满紧迫感和快乐。不要想太多——只是做,做,做!享受你所做的一切,不要为你的产出质量而感到压力。不要害怕放弃启发原型的想法,让原型引领你走向新的方向。注意世界上出现在你面前的东西并追求它。就像从雾中出现的山脉一样,原型链将帮助你更好地看到你的创意愿景。

The best general advice that I can give you about prototyping is just to throw yourself into it with urgent, joyful abandon. Don’t think too hard—just make, make, make! Enjoy everything you do, and don’t get stressed out about the quality of your output. Don’t be afraid to abandon the idea that inspired a prototype and let the prototype lead you in a new direction. Notice what is appearing in front of you in the world and pursue it. Like a mountain range emerging from the mist, the chain of your prototypes will help your creative vision come into better view.

正如马克·塞尼最近告诉我的那样:“对于《战神》来说,关键是要让每个瞬间都史诗般精彩。对于《控制》来说,关键是叙事、环境和游戏机制的官僚超现实主义。” 13原型设计将帮助你确定你的创作方向,这将体现在我所认为的构思阶段最重要的可交付成果中:我们游戏的项目目标。

As Mark Cerny recently told me: “For God of War, it’s about making each moment epic. For Control, it’s about the bureaucratic surreality of narrative, environment and game mechanics.”13 Prototyping will help you define your creative direction, which will find expression in what I see as the most important deliverable outcome of the ideation phase: our game’s project goals.

  1. 1. “游戏引擎列表”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines

  2. 1.  “List of Game Engines,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines.

  3. 2. Anthropy,电子游戏杂志爱好者的崛起

  4. 2.  Anthropy, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters.

  5. 3 . Bogost,玩任何东西

  6. 3.  Bogost, Play Anything.

  7. 4.从事线下娱乐的游戏设计师也可以使用嗅觉设计来增强玩家的体验。但除了视觉、听觉、味觉、嗅觉和触觉这五种感觉之外,还有更多的感觉模式。本体感觉,即我们对身体相对于自身位置的感觉,是虚拟现实设计师的一个重要考虑因素,人类还有大约二十种其他感觉,游戏设计师可能会在设计中使用它们。我们将在第 7 章中回顾这些感觉。有关更多信息,请参阅维基百科“Sense”,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense

  8. 4.  Game designers working in location-based entertainment can also use olfactory (smell) design to enhance their players’ experiences. But there are many more sensory modalities than the five senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. Proprioception, our sense of where our body is in relationship to itself, is an important consideration for virtual reality designers, and humans have around twenty other senses that game designers might use in their designs. We’ll come back to the senses in chapter 7. For further information, refer to “Sense,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense.

  9. 5.Swink《游戏感觉》,159。

  10. 5.  Swink, Game Feel, 159.

  11. 6 . Swink,游戏感觉,160。

  12. 6.  Swink, Game Feel, 160.

  13. 7. Randy Thom,《为声音设计电影》,FilmSound.org,1999 年,http://filmsound.org/articles/designing_for_sound.htm

  14. 7.  Randy Thom, “Designing a Movie for Sound,” FilmSound.org, 1999, http://filmsound.org/articles/designing_for_sound.htm.

  15. 8.Swink《游戏感觉》,161页。

  16. 8.  Swink, Game Feel, 161.

  17. 9.克里斯托弗·鲁尔 (Christopher Rule),《《欢乐满人间》原版恐怖预告片重录》,2006 年,https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=2T5_0AGdFic 。

  18. 9.  Christopher Rule, “THE ORIGINAL Scary ‘Mary Poppins’ Recut Trailer,” 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T5_0AGdFic.

  19. 10. Austin Wintory,GDC Microtalks 2014:一小时,十位演讲者,全套游戏思维!https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020391/GDC-Microtalks-2014-One-Hour,31 :45。

  20. 10.  Austin Wintory, GDC Microtalks 2014: One Hour, Ten Speakers, a Panoply of Game Thinking!, https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020391/GDC-Microtalks-2014-One-Hour, 31:45.

  21. 11. IGDA 信用标准委员会,“信用标准指南 Ver 9.2 [EN/JP] [2014]”,IGDA.org,2014 年 8 月 15 日,https: //igda.org/resources-archive/crediting-standards-guide-ver-9-2-en-jp-2014/ 。

  22. 11.  IGDA Credit Standards Committee, “Crediting Standards Guide Ver 9.2 [EN/JP] [2014],” IGDA.org, August 15, 2014, https://igda.org/resources-archive/crediting-standards-guide-ver-9-2-en-jp-2014/.

  23. 12.伊拉·格拉斯和丹尼尔·萨克斯,《伊拉·格拉斯的差距》,2014 年,https://vimeo.com/85040589

  24. 12.  Ira Glass and Daniel Sacks, THE GAP by Ira Glass, 2014, https://vimeo.com/85040589.

  25. 13.私人通信,2020年5月31日。

  26. 13.  Private communication, May 31, 2020.

 

 

6. 沟通作为游戏设计技能

6    Communication as a Game Design Skill

游戏设计师是沟通者。我们制作的游戏将想法和感受传达给我们的玩家。游戏是高度概念化的,由逻辑、数字、空间和语言构成。这些通过图像、声音、触觉和我们感官的其他形式传达。游戏以许多复杂而精致的方式传达意义,这也是游戏设计成为如此迷人的艺术实践的原因之一。

Game designers are communicators. The games that we make communicate ideas and feelings to our audience of players. Games are highly conceptual, built of logic, number, space, and language. These are conveyed in image, sound, touch, and the other modalities of our senses. Games convey meaning in many complex and sophisticated ways, and this is part of what makes game design such a fascinating artistic practice.

当然,除了与玩家沟通,游戏开发者之间也需要相互沟通。如果与玩家沟通的过程十分复杂,那么开发者之间的沟通方式也必然如此,这既带来了问题,也带来了机遇。

Of course, as well as communicating with our players, the people who make games have to communicate with each other. And if the process of communicating with our players is complex and sophisticated, it stands to reason that the way developers communicate with each other will be too, creating both problems and opportunities.

沟通、协作、领导力和冲突

Communication, Collaboration, Leadership, and Conflict

与大多数游戏开发者一样,我非常重视沟通、协作、领导力和冲突,这是游戏开发的核心方面。这些“软技能”与团队成员之间的合作方式有关,与强大的游戏设计、巧妙的编程或精美的艺术和音频一样,都是创造优秀视频游戏的一部分。

Like most game developers, I place a strong focus on communication, collaboration, leadership, and conflict as core aspects of game development. These “soft skills,” relating to the way that team members work with one another, are as much a part of the creation of an excellent videogame as strong game design, ingenious programming, or beautiful art and audio.

沟通这一点很重要,因为制作游戏需要大量讨论与游戏设计相关的抽象概念以及与游戏实施相关的具体事实。不幸的是,我们大多数人的沟通能力远不如自己所愿。最简单的沟通——关于街道方向或家庭作业——也可能令人困惑和沮丧。我见过这种沮丧感被放大了一万倍,因为有人徒劳地试图向队友描述一个复杂的游戏设计理念,每个人都用自己的先入之见和偏见混淆了谈话。

Communication is important because making a game involves much discussion of abstract concepts related to our game’s design and of concrete facts related to its implementation. Unfortunately, most of us aren’t nearly as good at communicating as we’d like to be. The simplest of communications—about street directions or a homework assignment—can be confusing and frustrating. I’ve seen that frustration amplified ten thousand–fold as someone tries in vain to describe a complicated game design idea to a teammate, each person muddying the conversation with their own preconceptions and biases.

事情变得更加复杂,交流就像我们所有的认知一样,深受情绪的影响。情绪影响我们说话和倾听的能力。你是否曾因为察觉到对方心情不好而推迟告诉对方一些难以启齿的事情?或者你是否曾因为对方说了某些话而感到难以启齿?幸运的是,我们可以通过学习我将在本章后面介绍的实用技能来提高我们的交流能力。

To make things even more complicated, communication, like all of our cognition, is profoundly affected by emotion. Emotion affects our ability to say things and to hear them. Have you ever put off telling somebody something difficult because you could tell that they weren’t in the right mood to hear it? Or have you found a conversation becoming difficult because you got defensive about something that was said? Happily, we can improve our ability to communicate, by learning practical skills like the ones I’ll introduce you to later in this chapter.

合作对于大多数游戏开发者来说,这一点很重要,因为我们中很少有人完全独立开发游戏。我们大多数人都是团队合作,从 3A 级开发者到独立开发者和学生。即使是那些我们认为是游戏制作作者的人,他们独立工作以实现他们独特的愿景,也会与其他人合作:那些制作软件工具并编写我们都使用的共享代码库的人,以及那些提供设计反馈和建议的人。

Collaboration is important for most game developers, because few of us make games entirely on our own. Most of us work in teams, from triple-A developers to indies and students. Even the people we think of as game-making auteurs, working in isolation to bring their unique vision into being, collaborate with other people: those who make the software tools and write the shared code libraries that we all use, and those who give design feedback and advice.

与他人合作可以充满乐趣、丰富多彩、启发人心和振奋人心。我们可以共同完成我们独自无法完成的事情。它也可能很困难、令人沮丧、痛苦甚至令人恐惧。幸运的是,良好合作的能力也是可以学习的。

Working with others can be fun, enriching, illuminating, and energizing. We can accomplish things working together that we couldn’t possibly achieve on our own. It can also be difficult, frustrating, agonizing, and even scary. Fortunately, the ability to collaborate well is also something that can be learned.

合作是 USC Games 项目的核心,也是游戏制作中非常重要的一个方面。电影剪辑师、导演兼音效设计师 Walter Murch(南加州大学电影艺术学院校友)曾强调过合作的重要性,他说:“工作的一半在于完成工作,另一半在于找到与人相处的方法,并让自己适应微妙的情况。” 1

Collaboration is built into the heart of the USC Games program as a very important aspect of game-making. Film editor, director, and sound designer Walter Murch—a USC School of Cinematic Arts alumnus—famously emphasized the importance of collaboration when he said, “Half the job is doing the job, and the other half is finding ways to get along with people and tuning yourself in to the delicacy of the situation.”1

我对默奇的“微妙处境”有两种解读。我认为他指的是一起完成工作的个人之间关系的微妙之处,他也在谈论他们所创作作品中复杂的元素平衡。总而言之,这就是“处境”:合作创作作品的人群和作品本身。这两件事紧密相连。如果队友相处不融洽——如果他们总是沟通不畅或互相争斗——那么他们创作的作品可能就不会达到预期效果。

I have two interpretations of Murch’s “delicacy of the situation.” I think that he is referring to subtleties in the relationships between the individuals doing a job together, and he’s also talking about the complex balance of elements in the creative work they’re making. Taken together, this is “the situation”: the community of people collaborating to make a creative work and the work itself. The two things are deeply interconnected. If teammates don’t get along—if they’re always miscommunicating or fighting against each other—then the creative work they’re making probably won’t hit the right notes.

不过,良好的合作不仅仅是轻松相处。根据我的经验,最好的合作方式是人们愿意互相尊重地挑战对方,以确保我们能够做出最好的设计决策。但建设性的分歧和破坏性的争论是有区别的,我们必须学会区分它们。

Good collaboration isn’t just about getting along easily, though. In my experience, it’s best when people are willing to challenge each other respectfully, to make sure that we’re reaching the best design decisions possible. But there’s a difference between productive disagreement and destructive argument, and we must learn to tell them apart.

领导是游戏开发的关键技能,无论我们是负责整个项目设计和开发的游戏总监,还是团队中最年轻的成员。领导力不仅仅是领导,而是与领导者合作。团队中的每个人,直到游戏总监,都必须能够识别何时领导,何时跟随。这对于团队中的学科负责人(首席艺术家、首席程序员等)尤其重要,他们必须弄清楚何时自己做决定,何时与游戏总监汇报。

Leadership is a key game development skill, whether we’re a game director in charge of the design and development of an entire project or the most junior person on a team. Leadership isn’t just about leading; it’s about working with leaders. Everyone on the team, right up to the game director, must be able to recognize when to lead and when to follow. This is particularly important for the discipline leads on a team (the lead artist, lead programmer, and so on), who must figure out when to make a decision on their own and when to check in with the game director.

优秀的游戏开发领导力在于知道什么时候需要在某件事上做更多的工作,什么时候该转向其他事情。它在于及时做出决定,以便其他人可以继续他们的工作。有时,它在于拒绝做出决定,因为我们仍在研究设计,然后与其他人合作,以便他们仍能继续前进。游戏团队领导力在于认识到开发团队的情绪状态,无论是个人还是团体,都要积极向上、保持平衡。这也包括帮助团队成员化解分歧。

Good game development leadership is about knowing when more work needs to be done on something and when it’s time to move on to something else. It’s about making timely decisions so that other people can move ahead with their work. It’s sometimes about refusing to make a decision yet, because we’re still figuring out the design, and then working with others so that they can still move forward. Game team leadership is about recognizing the emotional state of a development team, as individuals and in groups, and bringing positivity and balance where it’s needed. It’s also about helping team members who have come into conflict resolve their differences.

培养真正的领导能力可能需要很长时间,但你会发现领导能力与良好的沟通、协作和冲突管理技能密切相关。

It can take a long time to develop genuine leadership ability, but you’ll find that the ability to lead is closely connected to good communication, collaboration, and conflict management skill.

为了解游戏总监的广泛技能,我推荐 Brian Allgeier 的优秀著作《指导视频游戏:创意领导者的 101 条建议》 。Clinton Keith 和 Grant Shonkwiler 合著的《创意敏捷工具:100 多种创意创新和团队合作工具》中的“组织改进”和“团队文化”部分为那些希望提高游戏开发领导技能的人提供了大量智慧。Ed Catmull 和 Amy Wallace 合著的《创意公司:克服阻碍真正灵感的无形力量》提供了有关创意领导力的宝贵建议,同时还提供了实际案例和对创意团队如何运作的真正理解。

To get a sense of the wide-ranging skills of a game director, I recommend Brian Allgeier’s excellent Directing Video Games: 101 Tips for Creative Leaders. The “Organizational Improvements” and “Team Culture” sections of Clinton Keith and Grant Shonkwiler’s Creative Agility Tools: 100+ Tools for Creative Innovation and Teamwork contain a lot of wisdom for people seeking to improve their game development leadership skills. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace, offers great advice about creative leadership, alongside practical examples and a real understanding of how creative teams work.

冲突游戏开发团队成员之间的冲突是我们讨论的每一个主题的一个重要方面。当然,很容易将冲突视为问题,但事实上冲突对于每个协作创作过程都是必不可少的。我们只需要学会妥善处理它,以尊重和富有成效的方式解决分歧。我们还必须学会在冲突发生时不要回避或忽视冲突,否则可能会导致更大的冲突。我推荐玛丽·斯坎内尔 (Mary Scannell) 的《冲突解决游戏大全》,这是对这些主题的精彩探索。

Conflict between the members of a game development team is an important aspect of every one of these subjects we’ve been discussing. Of course, it’s easy to see conflict as a problem, but in fact conflict is essential and necessary to every collaborative creative process. We just have to learn to handle it well, working through disagreements respectfully and productively. We also have to learn not to avoid or ignore conflicts when they happen, which can lead to even bigger blow-ups down the line. I recommend The Big Book of Conflict Resolution Games by Mary Scannell as an excellent exploration of these subjects.

沟通、协作、领导力和冲突可能很难讨论,因为我们谈论这些话题往往显得太明显,以至于平淡无奇。作为话题,它们也充满了社会禁忌,因此直截了当地讨论它们可能会让你显得怪异、吹毛求疵或告密。但如果我们要建立一个重视尊重、信任和同意的团队,我们需要确保我们能够很好地沟通和协作。

Communication, collaboration, leadership, and conflict can be difficult to discuss, since the things we can say about them often seem so obvious as to be banal. As subjects, they’re also quite loaded with social taboo, so that discussing them in a straightforward way might mark you as a weirdo, hypercritical, or a snitch. But we need to make sure that we’re communicating and collaborating well if we’re going to build a team that values respect, trust, and consent.

幸运的是,有很多很好的技巧可以帮助我们进行本质上的“谈论谈话”,其中许多技巧感觉就像游戏一样。我们将在本书中介绍其中的一些技巧。

Luckily, there are lots of good techniques for helping us with what is essentially talking about talking, and many of them feel like games. We’ll look at some of them in the course of this book.

最基本的沟通技巧

The Most Basic Communication Skills

我在 Crystal Dynamics 工作期间,曾了解到有效沟通的基本技能:清晰、简洁和积极倾听。这三个简单的想法引起了我的强烈共鸣。我在整个职业生涯中都使用过它们,每个游戏开发者都可以从牢记它们中受益。让我们逐一看看这些。

Sometime while I was at Crystal Dynamics, I was introduced to the basic skills that underlie all effective communication: clarity, brevity, and active listening. These three simple ideas resonated with me very strongly. I’ve used them throughout my career, and every game developer can benefit from keeping them in mind. Let’s take a look at these, one at a time.

清楚

Be Clear

清晰是良好沟通的本质。如果信息不清晰,就无法被理解。

Clarity is the essence of good communication. If a message is not clear, it cannot be understood.

游戏设计师经常需要付出额外的努力才能表达清楚。我们提出的想法和所做的工作往往很复杂、很抽象。我们必须谨慎选择措辞,并尽量做到具体、准确。例如,区分玩家和玩家角色很重要。

Game designers often have to work extra hard to be clear. The ideas we’re proposing and the work we’re doing are often complicated and abstract. We have to choose our words carefully and should try to be specific and exact. For example, it’s important to distinguish between the player and the player-character.

由于游戏设计师使用的概念名称并不总是得到广泛认可,因此我们对清晰度的追求变得复杂。你所说的灰盒我可能称之为块网格。这就是为什么我尽量避免使用行话,直到我确定与我交谈的人理解某个特定术语。

Our quest for clarity is complicated by the fact that the names for concepts that game designers use are not always widely agreed upon. What you call graybox I might call blockmesh. That’s why I try to avoid using jargon until I’m sure that the person I’m talking to understands a particular term.

游戏设计概念的流行新绰号一直在不断出现,然后逐渐淡出历史:clutch、mobs、tanking、nerfing——这些都是有用的缩写术语,当我们一致认为我们知道它们的含义时,我们可以在团队中使用它们。但不要为了炫耀你的游戏设计能力而使用行话。这通常会适得其反,如果人们碰巧以前没有听说过某个术语,那么他们就会被排除在对话之外。

Catchy new nicknames for game design concepts are invented all the time and then fade into history: clutch, mobs, tanking, nerfing—these are all useful shortcut terms that we can use on a team when we’ve agreed that we know what they mean. But resist using jargon just to show off your game design chops. It’s usually counterproductive, and it keeps people with useful ideas out of the conversation if they happen not to have heard a term before.

当然,如果沟通不清楚,最有效的方法就是让不理解的人说出来。在我职业生涯的早期,我得到了一条我所收到过的最好的游戏开发建议:如果我不明白某件事,我不应该担心自己显得无知;我应该直接要求解释。直到今天,我发现如果我说我不明白某件事,这会让谈话变得更好,有时对房间里的每个人都是如此。我问的人通常可以快速轻松地重述他们的意思,而且我经常注意到其他人从片刻的额外解释中受益匪浅。

Of course, if a piece of communication isn’t clear, the surefire way of bringing clarity is for the person who didn’t understand to say so. Early in my career, I was given one of the best pieces of game development advice that I ever received: I was told that if I didn’t understand something, I should not worry about seeming ignorant; I should just ask for an explanation. Right up to the present day, I’ve found that if I say when I don’t understand something, it makes the conversation better, sometimes for everyone in the room. The person I’m asking can usually just restate what they mean quickly and easily, and I often notice others benefiting from a moment’s additional explanation.

当我这样做时,我通常不会觉得自己低人一等——如果有的话,有信心要求澄清会让一个人看起来更有能力。而且提出问题意味着我再也不会有那种糟糕的感觉了,这种感觉在我职业生涯的一开始就会出现,那就是因为我错过了一些重要的想法,而离谈话的深层含义越来越远了。所以,通过提问来帮助澄清问题。

I don’t usually feel perceived as lesser when I do this—if anything, having the confidence to ask for clarification makes a person seem more capable. And asking means that I never have that awful feeling anymore, that I would sometimes get at the very start of my career, of drifting further and further away from the deep meaning of a conversation because I’d missed some important idea near the start. So, help bring clarity by asking questions.

请记住,提问的自由往往与社会特权有关,属于大多数人的身份。我们需要创造公正和平等的工作环境,让每个人都有发言权。团队领导和高级团队成员可以发挥重要作用,在会议中设定基调,这样我们就不会打断和打断对方的发言,通过发言来支持同事的想法或问题,并与那些想法可能被忽视的人进行一对一的交流。创造每个人都有发言权的团队文化需要付出努力,但我们必须意识到,我们可以采取切实可行的措施来实现这一点。

Keep in mind that the freedom to ask questions is often attached to social privilege, in belonging to an identity that is in the majority. We need to create just and equitable working environments, where everyone feels able to speak up. Team leaders and senior team members have a role to play here in setting a tone in meetings so that we do not interrupt and speak over each other, by speaking up to support colleagues’ ideas or questions, and by doing one-on-one check-ins with people whose ideas may be getting overlooked. Creating team cultures where everyone has a voice takes effort, but it’s important for us to realize that there are tangible steps we can take to do so.

简洁的

Be Brief

有句老话说:“简洁是智慧的灵魂”。无论“智慧”是指智慧还是幽默,如果信息传递得快,就会更有效。意思传达得更有冲击力,笑话听起来更尖锐。要与人交流,我们必须吸引他们的注意力,而每个人的注意力都是有限的。所以要直奔主题,尽快说出你想说的话,同时保持清晰。

“Brevity is the soul of wit” runs the old proverb. Whether “wit” means intelligence or humor, if a message is delivered quickly, it’s more effective. A meaning lands more impactfully, or a joke rings out more sharply. To communicate with someone, we have to hold their attention, and everyone’s attention is limited. So get to the point and say what you have to say as quickly as you can, while still being clear.

这里有一个矛盾——简洁和清晰有时是相互竞争的。你必须决定自己是否足够简洁,同时也足够清晰。将一个复杂的概念归结为一个简单的封装需要付出努力。正如 17 世纪数学家 Blaise Pascal 所说,“我本来想写一封更短的信,但我没有时间。”

There’s a tension to hold here—sometimes brevity and clarity are in competition with each other. You’ll have to decide whether you’re being brief enough while also being clear enough. And boiling down a complex concept to a simple encapsulation takes effort. As the seventeenth-century mathematician Blaise Pascal said, “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.”

为了达到良好的平衡,可以考虑少说一点,并询问对方是否表达清楚。这样,对方就可以用后续问题引导对话,而不是耐心地听你告诉他们一些他们已经知道的事情。

To strike a good balance, consider saying a little less than you might be inclined to say, and ask if you’re being clear. The person you’re talking to can then guide the conversation with follow-up questions, instead of patiently listening while you tell them something they already know.

有人曾经告诉我,当你在进行游戏设计对话时,需要讨论一长串问题,那么挑选出三个最大的问题并只讨论这些问题(至少目前如此)就显示出了良好的领导能力和协作能力。这样,你就不会让大家不知所措,最重要的事情也会得到应有的关注。一旦这些大事得到处理,我们就可以稍后再讨论其他问题。

Someone once told me that when you’re going into a game design conversation with a long list of issues to get on the table, it shows good leadership and collaborative skill to pick the three biggest issues, and talk only about those (for now, at least). That way, you don’t overwhelm people, and the most important things get the attention they deserve. We can always come back to the other issues later, once these big things have been taken care of.

游戏设计师经常会发现,简明扼要是一件很难的事:我们的工作非常有趣,值得深入讨论。但我在职业生涯中看到,在散漫的笔记和冗长的演讲中,游戏开发中宝贵的时间被浪费了多少。停下来想想,你是否可以更简洁一些。

Game designers can often find it challenging to be brief: our work is fascinating and rewards deep discussion. But I’ve seen in my professional life how much valuable game development time can be eaten up by discursive note-giving and long-winded presentations. Pause and consider whether you could be more concise.

积极倾听

Listen Actively

倾听是最被低估的沟通技巧。积极倾听意味着注意别人说的话。这似乎很明显,但即使是善于倾听的人也会被自己的想法分散注意力。如果你像这样注意力不集中,道歉并要求与你交谈的人重复你错过的内容。

Listening is the most undervalued communication skill. Listening actively means paying attention to what someone is saying. This might seem obvious, but even people who are good listeners get distracted by their own thoughts. If you have a lapse in your attention like this, apologize and ask the person you’re speaking with to repeat what you missed.

积极倾听还有另一层含义:当你看着对方,偶尔点头,并在对方说话时说“嗯嗯”或“嗯嗯”时,向对方表明你正在听对方说的话。我们中的许多人在倾听对话时都会自然而然地这样做;我认为这就像计算机用来在互联网上建立和维持通信的“握手协议”。它表示“是的,我还在听你说话——继续。”同样的语言也可用于表示某个话题已经过时了。“嗯嗯,是的,我明白了”表示是时候转到下一个话题了。

There’s another meaning of active listening: it’s when you show someone that you’re following what they’re saying by looking at them, nodding occasionally, and saying “mm-hmm” or “uh-huh” as they speak. Many of us do this naturally as we listen in conversation; I think it’s like the “handshaking protocol” that computers use to establish and maintain communication over the Internet. It says, “Yes, I’m still receiving you—keep going.” The same kind of language can be used to signal when a subject is outliving its welcome. “Uh-huh, yep, I got it” says that it’s time to move on to the next topic.

并不是每个人都会自然而然地表现出这种关注。如果你不喜欢这样做,别担心。还有另一种方法可以向某人确认他们已经在我从事游戏设计工作期间,我学到了这种技巧,我发现它对于消除误解和节省时间非常有效。这种技巧称为镜像或反射,非常简单。在听完一个复杂的陈述或问题后,你会说:“让我把这句话反射给你,看看我是否理解正确了”,然后总结你认为听到对方说了什么。最有可能发生的事情是,对方会说:“差不多就是这样,但是…… ”然后补充一些你没完全理解的小细节。

Overt displays of attention like this don’t come naturally to everyone. If you don’t like doing it, don’t worry. There’s another way to confirm for someone that they’ve been understood. I was taught this technique partway into my game design career, and I find it enormously effective for eliminating misunderstandings and saving time. The technique is called either mirroring or reflecting, and it is very simple. At the end of a complex statement or question that you’ve listened to, you say, “Let me mirror that back to you to see if I’ve understood you correctly,” and then you summarize what you think you heard the other person say. What will most likely happen is that the other person will say, “That’s almost it, but ” and then fill in some small detail that you hadn’t quite got.

这看起来似乎简单得可笑,但却非常有效。在讨论游戏设计的复杂性时,误解很容易潜入我们对所做事情的理解中。镜像可以以几乎不可思议的效果可靠地揭示潜在的误解。几乎每次我使用这种技术时,我都会发现一些我忽略或误解的小而重要的细节。通常,这些误解除了浪费时间外,不会造成太大影响。有时它们可​​能会导致可怕的后果。让镜像成为您沟通工具包的一部分。

This might seem ridiculously simple, but it works like magic. When discussing the complexities of game design, it’s very easy for misconceptions to creep into our understanding of what we’re doing. Mirroring reliably exposes potential misunderstandings with almost uncanny effectiveness. Most every time I use this technique, I discover some small but important detail that I’d overlooked or misunderstood. Often those misunderstandings wouldn’t have amounted to much apart from lost time. Sometimes they could have led to dire consequences. Make mirroring a part of your communication toolkit.

积极倾听可以让你停下手头上的其他事情,将注意力全部集中在对方身上,从而为你带来加分。在我们忙于处理多项任务的生活中,手机几乎总是拿在手里,人们很少这样做。但多任务处理分散注意力的代价往往是工作效率低下、容易出错,沟通无效或没有影响力。

You get bonus points for active listening by stopping everything else that you’re doing and focusing your whole attention on the person you’re listening to. In our multitasking lives and with our phones almost always in our hands, it’s becoming quite rare for people to do this. But the divided attention of multitasking often comes at a price of work that is inefficient and error-prone, and communication that is ineffective or uninfluential.

如果你一边在和别人打电话一边浏览社交媒体,你可能会错过他们说的一些重要内容。如果你在队友告诉你一些关于游戏设计的重要信息时继续编码,他们可能会离开你的办公桌,认为你没有听到他们说的话,或者你不在乎。最好的积极倾听可以让别人清楚地知道你重视他们说的话,这会带来强烈的情感益处,并建立尊重和信任。

If you’re reading social media while talking to someone on the phone, you might miss something important that they say. If you keep coding while a teammate is telling you something important about the game’s design, they might walk away from your desk thinking that you didn’t hear them or that you don’t care. The best active listening lets others clearly know that you value what they’re saying, which has a strong emotional benefit and builds respect and trust.

清晰、简洁、积极倾听。当你们的沟通出现问题时——当事情变得混乱或情绪化,从而产生问题时——回到这三个朋友身边,他们会引导你走上正轨。

Clarity, brevity, active listening. When things go wrong in your communication—when things get confused or emotional in a way that is creating problems—come back to those three friends and they will steer you right.

三明治

Sandwiching

我因使用并热爱一种名为“三明治”的沟通技巧而闻名,有时甚至因此被人取笑。我不在乎——“三明治”是一种非常有效的技巧,可用于对某人的创意作品或工作表现给予建设性的批评性反馈,它在行业和学术界都让我受益匪浅。

I am well known for my use of and love for the communication technique known as sandwiching, to the point where I sometimes get teased about it. I don’t care—sandwiching is a powerful technique to use when giving someone constructively critical feedback about their creative work or their performance on the job, and it has served me well in both industry and academia.

给别人反馈时,先赞美,告诉他们你喜欢的东西。这是三明治的第一片面包。这不能只是空洞的赞美:你必须真诚,所以选择你真正喜欢的东西。如果你一开始找不到你喜欢的东西,再看看。我相信每一个创造性的行为都有值得钦佩的地方——可能是这个人付出了一些努力,或者他们真的把一些小细节做到了极致,尽管有重大问题需要讨论。

When giving someone feedback, start with a compliment, telling them something you like. This is the first slice of bread in the sandwich. This can’t just be empty praise: you have to be authentic, so choose something that you actually like. If you can’t find anything you like at first, look again. I believe there is something to admire in every act of creativity—it might be that the person put in some effort, or that they really aced some small detail, even though there are major problems to discuss.

第一次赞美有几个作用。首先,这是表达尊重的简单明了的方式。尊重是信任的基础,如果我们能够给予和接受建设性的批评,从而使我们的工作更出色,那么信任就是我们要培养的。

This first compliment plays a few roles. First, it’s a clear and easy way to show respect. Respect is the basis for trust, and trust is what we want to nurture if we’re going to be able to give and receive the constructive criticism we need to make our work great.

其次,对于创意人士来说,听听别人在自己的游戏或表现中做了哪些改进其实很有用。如果我们做对了的事情得不到表扬,就很难确定自己的工作中有什么价值。

Second, it’s actually useful for creative people to hear what is working for others in their game or in their performance. Without praise for the things we’re getting right, it can be hard to know for sure what is of value in our work.

第三,赞美可能在当前交流中起到营造良好情绪的作用。如果我们对作品和批评者感觉良好,当他们给我们建设性批评时,我们可能更能听懂他们说的话。

And third, a compliment may play some role in creating good emotion around the current act of communication. If we’re feeling good about the work and about the person critiquing it, we may be more able to hear what they’re saying when they give us their constructive critique.

我在给出反馈时经常会提到几件我喜欢的事情,因为我知道,我越清楚地向别人表明我喜欢他们的工作并尊重他们的能力,我就能越深入地提出建设性的批评。

I will often mention several things that I like when I’m giving feedback, because I know that the more clearly I signal to someone that I like their work and respect their abilities, the more deeply I can dive with my constructive criticism.

三明治中的馅料就是建设性的批评,就像馅料是三明治中最有营养和最美味的部分一样,你的建设性批评是你必须传达的最重要的信息。在这本书中,我们将讨论游戏设计作为一种迭代艺术形式,而我们收到的关于我们工作的建设性批评是迭代循环的重要组成部分。我们制作一些东西,把它给别人玩,他们给我们他们的建设性批评(以某种方式,在这种情况下是口头的),然后我们对其进行评估。根据收到的反馈,我们对所构建的内容进行修改,然后再次进行游戏测试。

The filling in the sandwich is constructive criticism, and just as the filling is the most nutritious and flavorful part of a sandwich, your constructive criticism is the most important information that you have to convey. Throughout this book we’ll be discussing game design as an iterative art form, and the constructive criticism that we receive about our work is an important part of the iterative loop. We build something, we give it to someone to play, they give us their constructive criticism (in one way or another, in this case, verbally), which we then evaluate. In light of the feedback we’ve received, we make changes to what we built, and we playtest again.

因此,您给出的建设性批评会谈论您喜欢刚刚演奏的内容(或某人的表演),但这样做的方式是有用的。它不会破坏;它会产生积极的影响。为了做好这一点,我们必须谨慎选择建设性批评的措辞。

So, the constructive criticism you give talks about what you didn’t like about what you just played (or about someone’s performance), but it does so in a way that is useful. It doesn’t tear down; it builds up. In order to do this well we have to choose the words of our constructive criticism carefully.

在第 12 章中,我们将更深入地探讨如何给予和接受良好的反馈。但为了帮助您入门,我有三个非常简单的原则来提出建设性的批评:直接具体批评工作而不是批评人

In chapter 12 we’ll look more deeply at giving and receiving good feedback. But to get you started, I have three very simple principles for giving constructive criticism: be direct, be specific, and criticize the work, not the person.

提出建设性批评时,要直截了当。不要试图将你的赞美夹在建设性批评的三明治馅料中。不要拐弯抹角,也不要试图将你的批评伪装成赞美。不要暗示你的批评,也不要消极被动地表达批评。要有勇气直言不讳,说出你认为不好的地方、你不喜欢的地方,或者你认为需要进一步改进的地方。不要不友善或咄咄逼人:说话要冷静,要友好、友好。你花时间使用三明治,所以你有权利直接提出你的建设性批评。

When giving constructive criticism, be direct. Don’t try and mix the bread of your compliments in with the sandwich filling of your constructive criticism. Don’t beat around the bush or try and disguise your criticism as a compliment. Don’t hint at your criticism or frame it passive-aggressively. Have the courage to come right out and say what you think isn’t good, what you don’t like, or what you think could use more work. Don’t be unkind or aggressive: speak calmly, and in a friendly, collegial way. You’re taking the time to use sandwiching, so you’ve earned the right to be direct with your constructive criticism.

我说的“具体”是指仅仅说“这个不好”或“我不喜欢这个”是不够的。你应该说说你认为它不好的原因,或者你不喜欢它的原因。不要说“这个跳跃机制不好”,而要说“这个跳跃机制不好,因为按下按钮和玩家角色离开地面之间有一个明显的停顿——感觉很粘,没有反应。”

By be specific, I mean that it isn’t enough to say, “This isn’t good” or “I don’t like this.” You should say why you think it isn’t good, or why you don’t like it. Instead of saying, “This jump mechanic isn’t good,” say, “This jump mechanic isn’t good because there’s a noticeable pause between pressing the button and the player-character leaving the ground—it feels sticky and unresponsive.”

第三条原则是批评作品而不是批评人,这是我从顽皮狗工作室总裁埃文·威尔斯那里学到的。埃文制定了一条简单的规则,那就是始终批评我们在屏幕上看到的游戏内容、通过扬声器听到的内容以及通过控制器感受到的内容,确保永远不要批评创作了我们所看到的作品的人。

The third principle—criticize the work, not the person—was something that I picked up from Naughty Dog studio president Evan Wells. Evan makes it a simple rule to always criticize what we can see of the game on screen, hear through the speakers, and feel through the controller, making sure never to criticize the person who made the work we are looking at.

如果你遵循批评工作而不是批评人的规则,那么人们会感到沮丧或愤怒的可能性就会降低,而且你还能让每个人都专注于提高游戏质量。这似乎很明显,但出乎意料的是,我们很容易从说“这个游戏机制不好”转变为说“制作这个游戏机制的方式不好”。通过专注于工作以及可以改进的地方,我们总能制定出一个可行的计划来改进它,而不会疏远做这项工作的人。

If you follow this rule of criticizing the work, not the person, you lower the chance that someone will get discouraged or angry, and you keep everyone’s focus on improving the quality of the game. This might seem obvious, but it’s surprisingly easy to stray from saying, “This game mechanic isn’t good” to saying, “The way that you made this game mechanic isn’t good.” By staying focused on the work, and what could be improved about it, we can always devise an actionable plan for making it better, without alienating the person doing the work.

这就是第一片赞美和建设性批评的夹层——第二片呢?当我们夹着东西时,通常用另一句赞美来结束反馈环节。我通常会尝试找到一些我之前没有提到的东西,但只要提醒他们你喜欢什么就足够了。有时,在建设性批评的背景下,还有更多值得称赞的话要说。(“我认为,考虑到跳跃控制还有更多工作要做,我喜欢的部分——动画和音效——一旦这些问题得到解决,感觉会更好。”)

So that’s the first slice of compliment bread and the filling of constructive criticism—what about the second slice of bread? When we’re sandwiching, it’s usual to conclude the feedback session with another compliment. I usually try and find something I hadn’t already mentioned, but it can be enough just to remind them what you liked. Sometimes there’s something more to say that’s complimentary in light of the constructive criticism. (“I think that, given that there’s more work to do on the jump controls, the part that I liked—the animations and sound effects—will feel even better once these problems are solved.”)

第二片面包通常比第一片面包薄——最后的积极评论通常会更快给出,特别是如果游戏制作者很好地接受了建设性的批评。如果有人对我的建设性批评表现出难以处理的情绪反应,我会花更多时间在最后给出一些额外的赞美,并展开对话,让游戏制作者有机会回应我的评论或解释他们的工作。我会花时间听他们说,也许在我们的谈话中,我们可以让游戏制作者对他们的工作感到满意,并有一个可行的计划来改进它。

The second slice of bread is often thinner than the first—the concluding positive comments are usually given more quickly, especially if the constructive criticism was received well by the game maker. If someone shows signs of having a difficult-to-deal-with emotional reaction to my constructive criticism, I’ll take rather more time to give some additional compliments at the end and will open up into a conversation, giving the game maker a chance to respond to my comments or explain their work. I’ll take the time to hear them out, and maybe in our conversation we can get to a place where the game maker feels good about their work and has an actionable plan for making it better.

有些人称这种技巧为“赞美三明治”,有些人则称其为“便便三明治”。这可能意味着他们认为建设性的批评是便便,但更有可能的是,他们与某人发生过冲突,而这个人没有使用真诚的赞美,而是以“夹心”作为借口来不友善。您可以利用“夹心”作为一个机会来改变怀疑者的想法,并向他们展示这种技巧确实有效。

Some people call this technique “the compliment sandwich,” and some call it “the poop sandwich.” That might mean they think that constructive criticism is poop, but it’s more likely that they had a run-in with someone who didn’t use authentic compliments and instead used sandwiching as an excuse to be unkind. You can use sandwiching as an opportunity to change the minds of skeptics and to show them that this technique actually works.

夹层反馈并非良好反馈的终极手段;它只是入门工具包。当你与某人之间尚未建立起牢固的尊重和信任关系时,也许当你对他们不太了解或与他们相处不融洽时,夹层反馈最有效。

Sandwiching isn’t the be-all and end-all of good feedback; it’s only a starter kit. It works best when you don’t yet have a strong bond of respect and trust with someone, maybe when you don’t know them very well or don’t get along with them easily.

建立团队成员之间的尊重和信任是成功游戏设计实践的关键。尊重源自重视彼此的经验、能力、价值观和意图,并达成共识,即尊重是相互的。当你知道你可以依靠别人为每个人的最大利益行事、做出正确的决定、成为优秀的合作者、对团队慷慨大方的同时追求自己的价值观时,信任就会产生。

Building respect and trust between team members is a key aspect of a strong game design practice. Respect comes from valuing each other’s experience, ability, values, and intentions, and having a shared understanding that the respect is mutual. Trust arises when you know you can rely on someone else to act in everyone’s best interests, to make good decisions, and to be a good collaborator, being generous to the team while also acting in pursuit of their own values.

你与某人的关系发展得越深、越牢固,夹层的需求就越少。随着时间的推移,三明治里的面包会变得越来越薄,直到完全消失,你可以直接向某人提出建设性的批评,并让他们满意。你很快就会创造出一种以合作为核心的团队文化,这反过来又会让你的团队制作出真正优秀的游戏。

The more your relationship with someone develops and strengthens, the less need there is for sandwiching. The bread in your sandwiches will get thinner and thinner over time, until it disappears completely, and you can give someone your constructive criticism directly and have it land well with them. You’ll soon create a team culture rich with strong values around collaboration, which will in turn allow your team to make truly excellent games.

尊重、信任和同意

Respect, Trust, and Consent

最强大的团队是团队成员相互尊重、彼此之间建立牢固的信任纽带并确保每个人都同意我们参与工作的方式的团队。我们通过使用沟通技巧、认真倾听每个人的意见并充分考虑每个人的世界观来表达彼此的尊重。只要我们坚持每个人的经历和信念都有价值的态度,表达尊重不会花费我们任何东西,除了时间和注意力。当我们互相尊重时,我们表明我们重视彼此,包括我们的工作、时间和技能。

The strongest teams are those where the team members respect each other, have strong bonds of trust between them, and make sure that everyone is consenting to the ways we’re involved in the work we’re doing. We show each other respect by using our communication skills, listening attentively to what each of us has to say, and giving full consideration to each of our worldviews. Showing respect doesn’t cost us anything apart from our time and attention, as long as we hold an attitude that everyone’s experiences and beliefs have value. When we show each other respect, we’re showing that we value each other, including our work, time, and skill.

当我们在相互尊重的氛围中一起工作,共同完成游戏开发的艰巨工作时,信任自然而然地就会产生。如果我过去帮助过你,并向你表明我尊重你,愿意优先考虑你的努力和福祉以及我自己的努力和福祉,那么你就会信任我。将来,我们将能够更快、更高效、更少压力地一起完成艰难的工作。团队成员之间的信任使我们共同完成的极其复杂的工作中的一切都更加顺利。

When we work together in an atmosphere of respect, doing the difficult work of game development together, then trust follows naturally. If I have helped you in the past and shown you that I respect you and am willing to prioritize your effort and well-being as well as my own, then you will come to trust me. In the future, we will be able to do difficult work together more quickly, efficiently, and with less stress. Trust between team members makes everything run more smoothly in the extremely complex work that we’re doing together.

在我们的生活中,包括游戏开发团队中,同意都很重要。我们必须确保团队中的每个人都清楚我们要求他们做什么,并且同意这样做,而不是强迫他们。这尤其适用于加班和报酬问题——我们是否按照加入团队时预期的工作时间工作,以及我们是否得到了合理的报酬。这也与我们工作的道德问题有关:我们是否同意我们正在制作的游戏中的价值。

Consent is important everywhere in our lives, including on our game development teams. We have to be sure that everyone on our team clearly understands what we’re asking them to do, and has agreed to do it, without coercion. This is applicable especially around questions of overtime and compensation—whether we’re working for the numbers of hours that we expected to work when we joined a team, and whether we’re being paid properly for our time. It is also relevant around ethical matters pertaining to our work: whether we agree with the values in the games that we’re making.

如果我们建立并维持一个尊重、信任和同意的环境,那么我们作为游戏开发者就能蓬勃发展。要创造这种环境,我们需要良好的沟通和协作。沟通确实是一项游戏设计技能。

If we build and maintain an environment of respect, trust, and consent, then we are setting ourselves up to flourish as game developers. To create this environment, we need to communicate and collaborate well. Communication truly is a game design skill.

  1. 1. Walter Murch 访谈,载于 Wohl,《Final Cut Pro 编辑技术》,524。

  2. 1.  Walter Murch interview in Wohl, Editing Techniques with Final Cut Pro, 524.

 

 

7 个项目目标

7    Project Goals

到目前为止,我们在构思阶段已经制作了三种类型的可交付成果:创意列表、研究笔记和原型。在完成构思之前,我们还需要创建最终可交付成果,而所有这些可交付成果都会引导我们实现这一目标:一组项目目标。

We’ve made three types of deliverables so far in the ideation phase: lists of ideas, research notes, and prototypes. There’s a final deliverable for us to create before we’re done with ideation, which all these other deliverables lead us toward: a set of project goals.

如果我们在构思结束时为项目设定一些明确的目标并致力于实现这些目标,那么我们就会给自己一个创造性的方向,推动我们进入项目的下一个阶段,并在整个过程中为我们提供帮助。对我来说,项目目标有两种类型:体验目标和设计目标。

If we establish some clear goals for our project at the end of ideation and commit ourselves to them, then we give ourselves a creative direction to propel us into the next phase of the project and to help us throughout its whole course. For me, project goals come in two types: experience goals and design goals.

体验目标

Experience Goals

体验目标的概念最早是在 2008 年 Tracy Fullerton 的第二版游戏设计研讨会上引入游戏设计文献。1 Tracy 告诉我:“我添加了 [体验目标的概念],因为我想阐明我们在 [南加州大学游戏创新实验室] 中使用的流程,这与人们谈论游戏设计流程的方式(以功能或支柱为驱动)截然不同。”

The idea of an experience goal was first introduced into the game design literature in 2008 with the second edition of Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop.1 As Tracy told me, “I added [the concept of experience goals] because I was trying to clarify the process we were using in [the USC Game Innovation Lab], which was so different from the way that people were speaking about game design process in general—as feature- or pillar-driven.”

体验目标就是你希望玩家拥有的体验类型,通常用情感体验来描述。虽然玩游戏的原因有很多,但游戏带给我们的情感通常是我们花时间玩游戏的原因:获胜的满足感和失败的挫败感、潜行游戏的紧张焦虑、艺术游戏的微妙忧郁或派对游戏的欢笑。

An experience goal is the kind of experience you want your players to have, often described in terms of an emotional experience. While there are many reasons to play a game, the emotions that games give us are usually why we spend time with them: the satisfaction of winning and the frustration of losing, the tense anxiety of a stealth game, the nuanced melancholy of an arthouse game, or the joyful laughter of a party game.

你的项目目标不必描述你将如何通过游戏设计创造体验——尽管,正如我们稍后会看到的,你的原型应该已经让你对如何做到这一点有了一个很好的了解。通过关注我们希望玩家拥有的体验,我们可以开始摆脱对玩游戏是什么或不是什么的先入之见。我们可以摆脱传统的、有限的观念关于乐趣,探索游戏设计广泛而深刻的表现力。我相信,在构思结束时为我们的游戏设定一个体验目标是创新游戏设计以及理解游戏作为一种艺术形式的关键。

Your project goals don’t have to describe how you’ll create the experience through the design of your game—although, as we’ll see later, your prototypes should have given you a decent idea of how you’ll do it. By focusing on the experience that we want the player to have, we can begin to free ourselves from our preconceptions about what playing a game is or isn’t like. We can move away from traditional, limited ideas about fun, and explore the wide, deep expressive power of game design. It’s my belief that establishing an experience goal for our game at the end of ideation is the key to innovating in game design and to understanding games as an art form.

Tracy Fullerton、MDA 框架和顽皮狗

Tracy Fullerton, the MDA Framework, and Naughty Dog

正如我所提到的,我从 Tracy Fullerton 的作品中了解到了这种对体验目标的关注。在《游戏设计研讨会》的一篇关于与游戏设计师 Jenova Chen 和 Kellee Santiago 以及南加州大学游戏创新实验室的学生团队合作开发Cloud 的附文中,Tracy 说道:

As I mentioned, I get this focus on experience goals from the work of Tracy Fullerton. In Game Design Workshop, in a sidebar essay about working on Cloud with game designers Jenova Chen and Kellee Santiago and a team of students in the USC Game Innovation Lab, Tracy says:

当我们开始开发《云》时,我们只有一个创新设计目标:以某种方式唤起你在晴朗的晴天躺在草地上仰望天空中飘过的云朵时所感受到的放松和快乐。……有时,我们(所有人)都梦想着飞上云朵,移动它们,将它们塑造成有趣的生物、笑脸或棒棒糖,或者任何你能想到的东西。对于一款游戏来说,这似乎是一个全新的领域。它似乎既冒险又有趣。所以我们决定试一试。2

When we began working on Cloud, we had only an innovation design goal: to somehow evoke the feeling of relaxation and joy that you get when you lie back in the grass on a clear sunny day and look up at the clouds wandering across the sky. At some time or another, we’ve (all) dreamed of flying up in the clouds and moving them, shaping them into funny creatures or smiley faces or lollipops, or whatever comes to mind. It seemed like entirely new territory for a game. It seemed risky and interesting. So we decided to give it a try.2

Tracy 在这里称之为创新目标:她在写这篇文章时还没有创造“体验目标”这个词。我们现在可以看到, Cloud团队正在设定一个体验目标。他们最初并不知道如何创造这种轻松、愉悦的体验。他们甚至不知道自己能否创造这种体验。但是,通过设定意图并开始探索,他们迈出了迈向游戏设计新领域的第一步。

Tracy calls it an innovation goal here: she had not yet coined the term experience goal when she wrote this essay. We can see now that the Cloud team was setting an experience goal. They didn’t initially know how they were going to create this relaxing, joyous experience. They didn’t even know if they could create it. But by setting an intention and beginning to explore toward it, they made their first bold move toward a new frontier for game design.

此举确立了一种永远改变游戏行业的设计理念。Cloud团队的核心成员后来创立了 thatgamecompany,并创作了获奖游戏FlowFlow和 2012 年度游戏Journey 。从与知名艺术家 Bill Viola 共同设计的游戏The Night Journey,到广受好评的游戏Walden:一款以趣味和系统的方式呈现亨利·戴维·梭罗 (Henry David Thoreau) 的作品和世界的游戏,Tracy 在自己的获奖实践中也运用了类似的体验目标设定技巧。Tracy 继续突破游戏的极限,在她的创作过程和艺术上不断创新。

That move would set in place a design philosophy that changed the game industry forever. The core of the Cloud team would go on to found thatgamecompany, and to create the award-winning games Flow, Flower, and the 2012 Game of the Year, Journey. Tracy has used similar experience goal–setting techniques throughout her own award-winning practice, from The Night Journey, the game that she codesigned with the renowned artist Bill Viola, to her widely acclaimed Walden: a game, a playful and systematic take on the work and world of Henry David Thoreau. Tracy has continued to push the envelope of what games can do, innovating in her process as well as her art.

著名的 MDA 框架(机制、动态和美学)也注重玩家体验。该框架由 Robin Hunicke、Marc LeBlanc 和 Robert Zubek 在他们开创性的 2004 年论文“MDA:游戏设计和游戏研究的正式方法”中提出,旨在帮助我们设计和分析游戏。

The famous MDA framework—mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics—also places a focus on player experience. The framework was proposed by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek in their groundbreaking 2004 paper “MDA: A Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research” and seeks to help us both design and analyze games.

MDA 中的美学是玩家在由游戏规则决定的动态系统中玩游戏时产生的体验。MDA 作者的目标之一是帮助我们更深入地理解“乐趣”这个常常含糊不清的概念,并拓展我们对游戏可以给我们带来哪些体验的思考。

The aesthetics in MDA are the experiences produced as the player plays in the dynamic system determined by the rules of the game. One of the goals of the MDA authors was to help us understand the often-nebulous idea of “fun” in a deeper way, and to expand our thinking about the kinds of experiences that games could give us.

设定体验目标(图 7.1 )是我们顽皮狗团队开发《神秘海域》世界的方式。 《神秘海域:德雷克的宝藏》游戏总监 Amy Hennig与高级概念艺术家 Shaddy Safadi 和团队合作,用一套简明的规则定义了我们想要创造的体验类型,并在工作室的公共区域展示了这些规则。这些规则帮助我们在整个系列的开发过程中保持正轨。我将它们视为体验目标,以一种有助于我们设计《神秘海域》游戏的方式定义了一个可能性空间。

Setting experience goals (figure 7.1) was how our team at Naughty Dog developed the world of Uncharted. Working with senior concept artist Shaddy Safadi and the team, Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune game director Amy Hennig defined the type of experiences that we wanted to create in a concise set of rules, which we displayed in a public area in the studio. These rules helped us stay on track throughout the development of the entire series. I see them as experience goals, defining a space of possibility in a way that helped us design the Uncharted games.

图 7.1

Figure 7.1

什么是《神秘海域》?(顽皮狗,约 2006 年)。附录 B 中提供了此文本的抄本。图片来源:《神秘海域:德雷克的宝藏》 ™ © 2007 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC。《神秘海域:德雷克的宝藏》是 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC 的商标。由顽皮狗 LLC 创建和开发。

What is Uncharted? (Naughty Dog, circa 2006). A transcription of this text is available in appendix B. Image credit: UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune™ © 2007 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. UNCHARTED: Drake’s Fortune is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Created and developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

经验类型

Types of Experience

大多数人都知道体验意味着什么,但当被问及体验是什么时,很多人都会感到困惑。亲身体验的本质(心理学家称之为主观体验)与意识的本质密切相关,历史上的哲学家都对这个话题感到困惑、惊讶和启发。

Most everyone knows what it means to have an experience, but when challenged to say what experience is, many of us struggle. The nature of firsthand experience (what psychologists would call subjective experience) is tied up with the nature of consciousness, and philosophers throughout history have been baffled, amazed, and inspired by this topic.

拥有体验就是对自我有一种感觉,并且有事情发生在那个自我身上。体验可能是身体的、精神的、情感的、精神的、宗教的、社会的、主观的、虚拟的和模拟的。智力和意识产生不同类别的心理体验,如思想、感知、记忆、情感、意志和想象。3

To have an experience is to have a sense of a self, with something happening to that self. Experience might be physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, religious, social, subjective, or virtual and simulated. Intellect and consciousness produce different categories of mental experience, like thought, perception, memory, emotion, will, and imagination.3

所有这些类型的体验都可以作为体验目标,成为优秀且有趣的游戏的基础。其中一些对游戏设计师来说似乎特别有用。

All these types of experience could form the basis of excellent and interesting games, when used as experience goals. Some of them seem particularly useful for game designers.

思想、记忆、想象力和意志力

Thought, Memory, Imagination, and Willpower

思考某事、了解某事和记住某事都与做每件事的体验相关。想象力也是如此,它赋予我们制定计划的能力,以及意志力,即“意志力”,它使我们能够做出决定并采取行动。游戏大量利用这些类型的体验。我知道如果我触碰那些尖刺,刺猬就会掉落所有圆环,我想这次我会试着连续弹开三个蘑菇人。

Thinking of something, knowing something, and remembering have associated experiences, of what it’s like to do each thing. The same with imagination, which gives us the ability to make plans, and will, in the sense of “willpower,” the faculty that allows us to make decisions and to take action. Games trade heavily in these types of experience. I know that if I touch those spikes, the hedgehog will drop all his rings, and I think that I will try to bounce off three mushroom people in a row this time.

思维、记忆、想象和意志是我们游戏体验的基本组成部分,如果我们愿意,我们可以为游戏设定一个体验目标,让玩家思考、记住或想象某事。这对于教育游戏的创造者来说可能尤为重要。意志力当然是游戏设计的核心,因为玩家的决定和行动驱动着大多数(尽管可能不是全部)类型的游戏设计。游戏设计师从代理和自主性的角度来谈论这一点。

Thought, memory, imagination, and will are fundamental parts of our experiences of games and—if we wanted—we could set an experience goal for our game that involved our players thinking something, remembering something, or imagining something. This might be particularly important for the creators of educational games. Willpower is, of course, at the very center of game design, since the decisions and actions of our players drive most (though arguably not all) types of game design. Game designers talk about this in terms of agency and autonomy.

洞察力

Perception

我们的感知是我们通过感官运作而获得的体验。大多数小学生都知道五种传统的感官:视觉、听觉、味觉、嗅觉和触觉,但本体感觉,即身体相对于自身位置的运动感觉,对游戏设计师来说非常重要。我们的平衡感和加速度前庭感觉对设计师也很重要,尤其是对于让我们四处移动的游戏来说。

Our perceptions are the experiences that we have as a result of the operation of our senses. Most schoolkids know the five traditional senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch, but the sense of proprioception, the kinesthetic sense of where your body is in relation to itself, is an important one for game designers. Our vestibular sense of balance and acceleration is also important for designers, especially for games that get us moving around.

热感受和痛感受(温度和疼痛)通常不被游戏设计师使用,但主题公园和虚拟现实的体验设计师经常使用热空气和冷空气来强化他们所塑造的体验。著名的Painstation互动艺术作品由 Tilman Reiff 和 Volker Morawe 于 2001 年创作,勇敢的人可以在柏林的 Computerspielemuseum(电脑游戏博物馆)玩,它使用疼痛作为在类似Pong的游戏中失败的负面强化。

Thermoception and nociception—temperature and pain, respectively—haven’t often been used by game designers, though experience designers for theme parks and virtual reality often use hot and cold air to reinforce the experience they’re shaping. The famous Painstation interactive art piece created by Tilman Reiff and Volker Morawe in 2001, which the brave can play at the Computerspielemuseum (Computer Games Museum) in Berlin, uses pain as a negative reinforcement for losing in a Pong-like game.

我们的身体还有大量其他内部感官,它们会告诉我们是否饿了、渴了、脸红了、窒息了,以及我们的胃、膀胱和肠道是否饱了。所有这些感官都是设计师寻求创造创新体验的切入点。

Our bodies have a large number of other internal senses, which tell us whether we’re hungry or thirsty, blushing, suffocating, and whether our stomachs, bladders, and bowels are full. All these senses are fair game for designers seeking to make innovative types of experience.

情感

Emotion

游戏带给我们的情感感受吸引我们进入游戏并让我们继续玩下去。多年来,游戏设计师常常只考虑主宰游戏史前五千年的两种情感:胜利的喜悦和失败的沮丧。但我们不应低估这些情感的力量。正如 Jesper Juul 在《失败的艺术:论玩电子游戏的痛苦》中指出的那样,我们在游戏中经历的失败并非没有其自身的乐趣。除了喜悦和沮丧之外,还常常存在其他情感:游戏的乐趣、驱动探索的好奇心以及完成游戏的满足感。

The emotional feelings that games give us are what draw us into a game and keep us playing. For many years, game designers often didn’t think beyond the two emotions that dominated the first five thousand years of the history of games: the joy of victory, and the frustration of defeat. We shouldn’t underestimate the power of these emotions, though. As Jesper Juul points out in The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games, the failure that we experience in games is not without its own kind of pleasure. Other emotions are often present alongside joy and frustration: the delight of play, the curiosity that drives exploration, and the satisfaction of completion.

如今,游戏设计师对游戏可能激发玩家的各种情感很感兴趣。也许正因为如此,在所有不同类型的体验中,情感体验往往是我们游戏体验目标中最有用的。在我能想到的大多数艺术形式中,我们的思想、记忆、想象、意志和感知体验交织在一起,形成了一个复杂的编织物,产生了伟大艺术带给我们的强烈而微妙的情感。

Today, game designers are interested in the wide range of emotion that games might provoke in their audience of players. Perhaps as a result, out of all the different types of experience, emotional experiences are often by far the most useful to us as experience goals for our games. In most every art form that I can think of, our experiences of thought, memory, imagination, will, and perception weave together in a complex braid that results in the powerful, nuanced emotion that great art brings out of us.

因此,游戏设计师必须具备“情感素养”,能够清晰准确地讨论各种可能的情感。对于我们许多人来说,这比听起来要难。多年来,许多文化都禁止广泛谈论情感。尤其是男性,他们经常成为这种禁忌的对象。

Therefore, it seems very important that game designers be “emotionally literate,” able to discuss a wide range of possible emotions with clarity and accuracy. For many of us, that’s harder than it sounds. Many cultures down the years have made it taboo to speak extensively about emotion. Men in particular have often been made the subject of that taboo.

为了帮助人们拓展情感素养,我会提醒他们注意皮克斯 2015 年电影《头脑特工队》中的五个角色:快乐、悲伤、恐惧、愤怒和厌恶。这些角色基于加州大学旧金山分校心理学家保罗·埃克曼博士的研究成果,他率先研究了情绪与面部表情的关系。埃克曼的研究确定了世界各地文化的人们在面部表现出的七种主要情绪:《头脑特工队》角色的名字就源于这五种情绪,此外还有惊讶和蔑视。

To help people expand their emotional literacy, I remind them of the characters of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust, five of the characters in Pixar’s 2015 film, Inside Out. These characters were based on the work of Dr. Paul Ekman, a UC San Francisco psychologist who pioneered the study of emotions in their relation to facial expressions. Ekman’s research identified seven primary emotions that people from cultures throughout the world show in their faces: the five that the Inside Out characters are named for, and also surprise and contempt.

这七种情绪可以作为我们为游戏设定情感体验目标的良好起点。故事驱动的游戏可能会在不同时间引发所有七种情绪,但我们可以通过选择只关注其中几种情绪,或者只关注其中一种情绪,为整个游戏设定一个总体方向。

This palette of seven emotions could be a strong starting point in helping us set an emotional experience goal for a game. It’s probable that a story-driven game will invoke all seven emotions at different times, but we can give our whole game an overall direction by choosing to focus on just a few of these, or maybe on just one.

要想更全面地了解情绪,可以看看爱因斯坦医学院心理学家罗伯特·普拉奇克博士的研究成果,他提出了一种心理进化的情绪反应分类方法。除了艾克曼的大多数主要情绪外,普拉奇克还添加了期待和信任,并在每个组中显示了不同程度的情绪强度。他的作品通常用图 7.2所示的“情绪之轮”来说明。从普拉奇克轮盘中随机挑选一种情绪并尝试设计一款引发这种情绪的小游戏是一项很好的游戏设计练习。

For a wider view of emotion, look to the work of Dr. Robert Plutchik, a psychologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who proposed a psychoevolutionary classification for emotional responses. Alongside most of Ekman’s primary emotions, Plutchik added anticipation and trust, and showed different levels of emotional intensity in each group. His work is often illustrated with the “wheel of emotions” shown in figure 7.2. It’s a good game design exercise to randomly pick an emotion from Plutchik’s wheel and attempt to design a small game that elicits that emotion.

图 7.2

Figure 7.2

罗伯特·普拉奇克博士的“情绪之轮”。图片来源:Machine Elf 1735,Wikimedia Commons,公共领域。

Dr. Robert Plutchik’s “wheel of emotions.” Image credit: Machine Elf 1735, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

社会与精神体验

Social and Spiritual Experience

虽然思想、记忆、想象、意志和感知的体验在几乎所有类型的游戏中都很常见,情感体验是大多数游戏风格的驱动力,但我之前提到的其他类型的体验对于希望创新的游戏设计师来说也可能很有价值。

While experiences of thought, memory, imagination, will, and perception are common to almost every type of game, and emotional experiences are the drivers of most styles of game, the other types of experience I mentioned earlier could also be valuable for game designers wishing to innovate.

社交体验是任何多人游戏设计的关键因素,从基于团队的电子竞技到大型多人游戏。精神和宗教体验是游戏设计师越来越感兴趣的话题。早期游戏理论家约翰赫伊津哈将游乐场视为一个神圣的空间,类似于宗教礼拜场所,宗教文学史学家詹姆斯·卡斯在《有限游戏与无限游戏》中讨论了游戏的精神层面。4特蕾西·富勒顿和比尔·维奥拉在他们的游戏《夜之旅》中研究了这一前沿领域。新的游戏设计师正在出现他们对冥想、正念、仪式和狂喜的宗教状态感兴趣。

Social experience is a key factor in the design of any multiplayer game, from team-based eSports to massively multiplayer games. Spiritual and religious experience is a topic increasingly of interest to game designers. The early game theorist Johann Huizinga saw the playground as a sacred space, akin to a site of religious worship, and James Carse, a historian of religious literature, discusses the spiritual aspect of play in Finite and Infinite Games.4 Tracy Fullerton and Bill Viola investigated this frontier in their game The Night Journey. New game designers are appearing who are interested in meditation, mindfulness, ritual, and ecstatic religious states.

写下你的体验目标

Writing Down Your Experience Goals

体验目标可以说是我们项目目标中最重要的一个。我强烈建议你专注于情感,但你应该选择最适合你和你的创作意图的体验类型。

The experience goal is arguably the most important of our project goals. I strongly recommend that you focus on emotion, but you should choose the type of experience that works best for you and your creative intention.

再次强调,不要试图描述你的游戏将如何为玩家创造这种体验。只需明确地将重点放在核心体验目标上,用尽可能清晰简洁的语言描述它。尽量让你的体验目标具体而具体,并用一句话总结每个目标。考虑使用普拉奇克情绪轮中的词语。大胆地结合概念来创造新的想法,但要避免使用将太多不同体验打包在一起的冗长的句子。清晰和简洁是这里的关键。

Again, don’t try to describe how your game will create this experience for your players. Just clearly isolate and focus on a core experience goal, describing it in language that is as clear and concise as possible. Try to make your experience goals specific and concrete, and summarize each one with a single sentence. Consider using words from Plutchik’s wheel of emotions. Be bold in combining concepts to create new ideas, but avoid run-on sentences that pack too many different experiences together. Clarity and brevity are the keys here.

不要包含太过松散或模糊的目标,比如“为玩家创造有趣且愉悦的体验”——这种体验目标太过笼统,无法成功指导你的设计。

Don’t include goals that are too loose or too vague, such as “create an interesting and entertaining experience for the player”—this kind of experience goal is too generic to guide your design successfully.

从角色扮演或幻想的实现角度来谈论游戏给玩家带来的体验是很有用的 — — “成为终极太空英雄”或“成为繁忙医院的医生”。在游戏行业中,你有时会听到体验目标被称为游戏的“本质陈述”、“愿景陈述”、“X 陈述”或“核心幻想”。从核心游戏设计和叙事元素的混合角度讨论游戏体验也很有价值:你会听到人们谈论游戏的“支柱”或“主题”。所有这些都很好。有很多方法可以描述游戏将提供的体验。无论你怎么称呼它们,选择体验目标都会指导你创作游戏。

It can be useful to talk about the experience that a game gives its players in terms of role-playing, or the fulfillment of a fantasy—“be the ultimate spacefaring hero” or “be a doctor in a busy hospital.” In the game industry, you’ll sometimes hear experience goals framed as the “essence statement,” “vision statement,” “X statement,” or “core fantasy” of a game. It can also be valuable to discuss the experience of the game in terms of a mixture of core game design and narrative elements: you’ll hear people talk about the “pillars” or the “themes” of a game. All of this is fine. There are many ways to describe the experience that a game will give. Whatever you call them, choosing experience goals will guide you in the creation of your game.

你的体验目标应该植根于你的原型

Your Experience Goals Should Be Rooted in Your Prototypes

在构思之初,选择一些游戏机制和叙事主题,看看它们能带来什么样的体验,这是可以的。从构思开始,最好的方法是选择我们最喜欢的原型,并在项目的剩余时间里努力扩大和增强它所带来的体验。

At the beginning of ideation, it’s fine to just pick some game mechanics and a narrative theme and see what kind of experiences they produce. The best way forward from ideation is to pick the prototype we like best and spend the rest of the project working to amplify and enhance the experience that it gives.

在构思结束时设定体验目标而不知道如何创造体验是有风险的如果你想确保你的项目会成功,那就给它一个与你的一个原型所具有的体验相关的目标已经开始制作,即使只是以未经提炼的形式。您可以在预制作(我们的下一个项目阶段)期间汲取经验的火花并努力将其放大。

It is risky to set an experience goal at the end of ideation without having any idea of how you’re going to create the experience. If you want to be sure that your project will be a success, give it a goal related to an experience that one of your prototypes has already begun to produce, even if only in an unrefined form. You can take the spark of an experience and work to amplify it during preproduction, our next project phase.

设计目标

Design Goals

您的设计目标与体验目标相辅相成。它们可能与游戏所运行的硬件、游戏类型、游戏机制或界面类型有关。您可能希望使用某种叙事风格、希望解决某些主题、希望通过游戏实现某些目标,或者希望设置其他类型的约束。

Your design goals complement your experience goal. They will probably be related to the hardware your game runs on, the genre of the game, the game’s mechanics, or the type of interface it has. There might be a narrative style that you want to use, some subject matter that you want to address, something you want to accomplish with your game, or some other type of constraint that you want to set.

如果在构思结束时,你 100% 确定要用游戏实现什么,那么就把它写在你的设计目标中。你的设计目标可能与你的体验目标重叠,也可能完全不同。

If, by the end of ideation, there’s anything that you’re 100 percent confident that you want to do with your game, then write it down in your design goals. Your design goals might overlap with your experience goal, or they might be totally separate.

一些常见的设计目标类别包括:

Some common categories of design goals are:

  • 运行游戏的硬件。您的游戏将在什么平台上运行?PC 还是 Mac?移动设备?游戏机?健身追踪器、手表还是耳机?自动驾驶汽车的控制台还是冰箱?随着数字技术逐渐渗透到我们周围的更多物体和环境中,您对硬件平台的选择只会越来越多。您不必将硬件平台项目目标锁定在一起,但这样做可以帮助您自信地前进,并可能节省您以后的设计时间。这个设计目标还与受众和市场有着重要的关系。如果您想接触特定的玩家群体,您必须考虑他们在什么硬件平台上玩游戏。
  • The hardware your game will run on. What platform will your game run on? PC or Mac? A mobile device? A game console? A fitness tracker, a watch, or some earbuds? A self-driving car’s console, or a refrigerator? As digital technology makes its way into more of the objects and environments around us, your choice of hardware platforms is only going to increase. You don’t have to lock in your hardware platform with your project goals, but doing so can help you move forward confidently and might save you design time later. This design goal also has an important relationship with audience and market. If you want to reach a particular group of players, you have to consider what hardware platforms they play games on.
  • 游戏机制、动词和玩家活动. 思考一下您所想象的游戏类型,并考虑将其中至少一些游戏机制、动词和玩家活动融入您的设计目标中。
  • Game mechanics, verbs, and player activities. Think about the types of play in the game you’re imagining and consider committing to at least some of those game mechanics, verbs, and player activities with your design goals.
  • 接口约定玩家将如何控制您的游戏?使用键盘和鼠标还是游戏控制器?在触摸屏上,通过点击、按住、捏合和滑动?使用检测其身体在空间中的位置或虚拟现实中注视方向的设备?在构思结束时锁定一两个界面约定可以让您的项目朝着好的方向发展。
  • Interface conventions. How will the player control your game? Using a keyboard and mouse or a game controller? On a touchscreen, by tapping, holding, pinching, and swiping? Using a device that detects the position of their body in space, or the direction of their gaze in virtual reality? Locking in one or two interface conventions at the end of ideation can send your project in a good direction.
  • 您想要使用的特殊硬件或软件。您可能决定使用虚拟现实耳机、移动增强现实框架或“alt-controller”(专门设计的替代控制器),就像每年在 alt.ctrl.GDC 节上看到的那样。
  • Special hardware or software you want to use. You might decide to use a virtual reality headset, an augmented reality framework for mobile, or an “alt-controller” (a specially designed alternative controller) like those seen each year in the alt.ctrl.GDC festival.
  • 你的游戏类型。如果您设想的游戏符合某种游戏玩法或叙事类型,请在您的设计目标中说明。请记住,最有创意的作品通常会颠覆类型,为我们带来新鲜而生动的东西。
  • Your game’s genre. If the game you’re imagining fits into a genre of gameplay or narrative, say so in your design goals. Remember, the most creative works often subvert genre to bring us something fresh and lively.
  • 你的游戏主题用直白的字面意思来解释:你的游戏是关于什么的?它可能是关于一只走失的小狗、一场总统选举,或者一对努力复合的恋人。
  • Your game’s subject matter. In straightforwardly literal terms: what is your game about? It might be about a lost puppy, a presidential election, or lovers struggling to reunite.
  • 你的游戏主题游戏主题是游戏叙事的中心话题。不同的作者对于何时设定故事主题有不同的看法。有些人在开始时就设定了,而其他人则在创作过程中逐渐形成主题。在《神秘海域 2:盗贼同盟》的开发初期,我们就决定我们的游戏将围绕信任和背叛展开,这有助于我们塑造故事。如果你能在构思结束时决定游戏主题,那么就将其与设计目标结合起来。
  • Your game’s theme. Your game’s theme is the central topic addressed by your game’s narrative. Different authors have different opinions about when to set the theme of a story they’re writing. Some do it at the start; others find it emerging as they work. Very early on in the development of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves we decided that our game would be about trust and betrayal, and that helped us to shape our story. If you can decide your game’s theme at the end of ideation, set it in place with your design goals.
  • 游戏的艺术指导目标。在构思结束时,您可能会对游戏的艺术方向有一个清晰的想法,这可能是您进行过的一些研究或制作的原型的结果。
  • Your game’s art direction goals. You might have a strong idea by the end of ideation about the art direction of your game, possibly as a result of some research you’ve done or a prototype you made.
  • 你的游戏的艺术目标。如果您是一位以电子游戏为艺术形式的艺术家,那么您可能会在游戏设计中考虑一些艺术目标。也许您正在制作一款游戏来表达您的感受或想法。您可能希望它具有娱乐性,或者表达严肃的观点,或者两者兼而有之。如果您是一位对社会或政治干预感兴趣的艺术家,这可能与……重叠。
  • Your game’s artistic goals. If you are an artist using videogames as your chosen art form, you might have some artistic goals in mind for your game. Perhaps you are making a game to express something you feel or an idea you have. You might wish to be entertaining, or to make a serious point, or some mixture of both. If you are an artist interested in social or political interventions, this might overlap with
  • 您的游戏的影响目标。您可能决定制作一款对世界有一定影响的游戏——这类游戏通常被称为影响游戏、严肃游戏、功能游戏、应用游戏或转型游戏。也许您希望您的游戏具有教育意义,对玩家的健康产生积极影响,或者对政治问题进行争论。萨布丽娜·库利巴 (Sabrina Culyba) 的书《转型框架:转型游戏开发的过程工具》对于那些寻求设计和评估旨在为玩家带来持久变化的游戏的人来说是一份宝贵的资源。
  • Your game’s impact goals. You might decide to make a game that has some impact in the world—these kinds of games are often called impact games, serious games, functional games, applied games, or transformational games. Perhaps you want your game to be educational, to have a positive impact on the health of your players, or to make an argument about something political. Sabrina Culyba’s book The Transformational Framework: A Process Tool for the Development of Transformational Games is an invaluable resource for those seeking to design and assess games that have the intention of creating lasting change in players.

尽管我在这里描述了许多不同类型的设计目标,但我认为在构思结束时只设定少数设计目标是值得的。我们想要做的是给自己一个前进的方向,同时在游戏开发过程中仍留有足够的回旋余地。

Even though I’ve described many different types of design goal here, I think it pays to only set a small number of design goals at the end of ideation. What we want to do is to give ourselves a direction to move in, while still allowing ourselves plenty of room for maneuver as we go forward through our game’s development.

对你确信自己会乐意遵守的事情做出一些设计承诺。通过在一个地方看到你目标的独特组合,写下来作为你的项目目标,你可能会发现其他人错过的游戏设计机会。

Make a handful of design commitments to things that you’re sure you will be happy to keep. By seeing the unique combination of your goals together in one place, written down as your project goals, you might see game design opportunities that others have missed.

综合起来,体验目标和设计目标为我们提供了项目目标

Taken Together, Experience Goals and Design Goals Give Us Our Project Goals

我们的项目目标是对方向的承诺。一旦我们选择了项目目标,我们希望在整个项目过程中都坚持这些目标。所以我们应该谨慎选择它们。

Our project goals are a commitment to a direction. Once we’ve chosen our project goals, we hope to stick to them for the entirety of the project. So we should choose them carefully.

如何将体验目标和设计目标相结合以创建项目目标取决于您。个人体验和设计目标的正确数量取决于您的团队、项目的持续时间及其背景——例如,它是商业游戏还是个人项目。在我的 USC 游戏课程中,我我的学生指定一到两个体验目标,以及几个(通常不超过三到四个)设计目标。

It’s up to you to decide how you’ll mix-and-match experience goals and design goals to create your project goals. The right number of individual experience and design goals will depend on your team, your project’s duration, and its context—for example, whether it’s a commercial game or a personal project. In my USC Games classes, I get my students to specify one or two experience goals, and a few (usually no more than three or four) design goals.

我们偶尔会在开发过程中抛弃项目目标,以应对我们所发现的问题,并在预生产结束时再次检查项目目标,看看是否需要修改。但如果我们不断改变项目目标,我们很可能只是在原地打转。通过仔细选择我们的体验目标和设计目标,我们可以为接下来的工作指明方向。这就像选择朝着远处的灯塔航行;如果我们始终能看到灯塔,我们就能知道自己在哪里,永远不会迷路。

We occasionally jettison a project goal partway through development, in response to a discovery that we’ve made, and we will check in on our project goals again toward the end of preproduction to see if they need revision. But if we keep changing our minds about what our project goals are, we’re likely just to spin in circles. By carefully choosing our experience goals and design goals, we give ourselves a clear direction for the work that’s coming next. It’s like choosing to navigate toward a lighthouse in the distance; if we keep the lighthouse in sight, we can always work out where we are and will never get lost.

曲目和成长

Repertoire and Growth

当我们制作游戏时,我们不应该只考虑我们想做什么,还应该考虑我们能做什么:我们能用我们拥有的技能创造什么。这并不是说我们不应该鞭策自己,不应该雄心勃勃。

When we’re making a game, we shouldn’t just consider what we want to make, we should also factor in what we can make: what we’re able to build with the skills we have. That’s not to say we shouldn’t push ourselves and be ambitious.

许多创作团体都有一套剧目:一套具有特定风格的作品,他们知道如何巧妙地创作或表演。例如,芝加哥莎士比亚剧团表演威廉·莎士比亚的戏剧,但采用现代背景和现代服饰。

Many creative groups have a repertoire: a body of work, in a particular style, that they know how to create skillfully or to perform well. For example, the Chicago Shakespeare Company performs the plays of William Shakespeare, but does so in modern settings and in modern dress.

2010 年,多产的苏格兰游戏工作室 Denki 的游戏设计师 Gary Penn 向我表示,游戏设计师和游戏开发工作室也有自己的作品,但我们通常不会用这些术语来谈论它们。例如,顽皮狗的作品由角色动作游戏组成,《古惑狼》《杰克系列》、《神秘海域》和《最后生还者》有着共同的游戏机制和叙事主题,尽管这些游戏系列在其他方面有很大不同。

The game designer Gary Penn, of the prolific Scottish game studio Denki, suggested to me in 2010 that game designers and game development studios also have repertoires, but that we often don’t talk about them in these terms. For example, Naughty Dog’s repertoire is made up of character-action games, and there are common game-mechanical and narrative themes uniting Crash Bandicoot, the Jak series, Uncharted, and The Last of Us, even though those game series are wildly different in other ways.

曲目很重要,因为创作艺术很难,而制作电子游戏更是难上加难。在 2010 年的 GDC Microtalk 上,Gary Penn 说道:“不要去想、谈论或写作。动手做。表演。视觉化。制作原型……开发就像流沙。不要追求第一次就完美无缺……机会总是青睐有准备的头脑。预料到麻烦。排练。探索。获得观点。做出明智的选择。像音乐家和演员一样,去构建曲目。曲目是应用肌肉——经过练习并可重复使用。” 5运作良好的游戏开发工作室既会发挥他们的优势,使用他们的曲目——他们已经知道如何去做——也会从每个项目中学习新的东西,在这个过程中成长。虽然《古惑狼》《最后生还者 第二部》有着共同的 DNA,但顽皮狗在制作每个系列时都学到了很多东西,以至于每个系列都标志着一次进化的飞跃。

Repertoire is important because making art is hard, and making videogames is exceptionally hard. In his 2010 GDC Microtalk, Gary Penn said, “Don’t think, talk, or write about it. Do it. Play-act. Visualize. Prototype. Development is quicksand. Don’t aim for perfect first time. Chance favors the prepared mind. Expect trouble. Rehearse. Explore. Get perspective. Make informed choices. Do to build repertoire, like musicians and actors. Repertoire is applied muscle—the practiced and reusable.”5 A game development studio that is working well will both play to their strengths, using their repertoire—what they already know how to do—and learn new things with each project, growing in the process. While Crash Bandicoot and The Last of Us Part II share common DNA, Naughty Dog learned so much in making each series that every one marked an evolutionary leap forward.

在我们的游戏开发团队中,我们应该问自己:我们的能力是什么?我们想要如何发展?我们已经擅长什么?我们想要做什么?学习或改进什么?我们想尝试什么?我们可能想尝试一种新的游戏类型或新的游戏机制。我们可能想尝试一种新的叙事类型或新的故事风格。我们可能想尝试新的工具、新的硬件或软件、新的受众群体或新的盈利计划。

On our game development teams, we should ask ourselves: What is our repertoire, and how do we want to grow? What are we already good at, and what do we want to learn or improve upon? What do we want to try? We might want to work in a new game genre or with new game mechanics. We might want to try a new narrative genre, or a new story style. We might want to try new tools, new hardware or software, a new audience demographic or a new monetization plan.

这里最简单的结论是:学会走路之前不要试图跑步。当我们选择成长领域时,我们可以努力在我们已经知道如何做的事情和我们将要推动自己的领域之间找到平衡。通过找到平衡,我们可以冒险,用新的游戏风格、机制和故事来让自己兴奋,同时确保我们不会让自己面临太多风险。

The simplest takeaway here is: don’t try to run before you can walk. As we choose areas for growth, we can work to find a balance between what we already know how to do, and the areas in which we will push ourselves. By finding balance, we can take risks and excite ourselves with new game styles, mechanics, and stories, while making sure that we don’t expose ourselves to too much risk.

考虑我们游戏的潜在受众

Considering the Possible Audience for Our Game

无论你正在制作什么类型的游戏,考虑最终会玩你的游戏的受众几乎肯定会帮助你设计它。大多数游戏设计师都可以从花一些时间思考如何找到想要玩他们游戏的受众并与之沟通中受益。当我们制定项目目标时,正是考虑我们游戏受众的最佳时机。

Whatever kind of game you’re making, thinking about the audience of people who will eventually play your game will almost certainly help you to design it. And most game designers can benefit from spending some time thinking about how they will find and communicate with an audience that would like to play their games. The time when we lay out our project goals is the perfect moment to give some thought to the audience for our game.

你可以通过一个非常简单的练习来做到这一点,只需在项目目标末尾写几个字,完成句子:“我们游戏的潜在受众是...... ”一些示例可能是:

You can do this with a very simple exercise, by writing just a few words at the end of your project goals, completing the sentence: “The possible audience for our game is ” Some examples might be:

  • “我们游戏的潜在受众是任何喜欢在地铁上用手机玩游戏的人,以及喜欢在社交媒体上观看有趣视频的人。”
  • “The possible audience for our game is anyone who likes playing games on their phone while standing on the subway, and who likes watching funny videos on social media.”
  • “我们游戏的潜在受众是热爱 3D‘魂系列’动作游戏和 2D‘银河战士恶魔城’游戏的核心玩家,并且会喜欢这两种游戏类型的混合。”
  • “The possible audience for our game is core gamers who love 3D ‘Soulslike’ action games and 2D ‘Metroidvanias,’ and would enjoy a combination of the genres.”
  • “我们游戏的潜在受众是喜欢数独和简·奥斯汀小说的人。”
  • “The possible audience for our game is made up of people who enjoy Sudoku and the novels of Jane Austen.”
  • “我们游戏的潜在受众是那些喜欢园艺并且年龄在八十岁以上的人。”
  • “The possible audience for our game is people who enjoy gardening and are aged eighty years of age and older.”

通过从喜欢游戏的人的角度来审视你的游戏,你可能会得到新的设计想法,从而引导你走向有趣且富有成效的方向。也许你会意识到你对游戏的思考方式缺少了一些东西,或者你正在考虑的东西并不那么合适。

By looking at your game through the lens of the people who would enjoy it, you might get new design ideas that lead you in interesting and productive directions. Perhaps you’ll realize that something is missing from the way you were thinking about your game, or that something you were considering isn’t such a good fit after all.

在商业世界中,与可能需要某种产品的人建立联系的过程称为营销。我在职业生涯早期就意识到,考虑我们的受众并做好营销是制作游戏的重要组成部分。现在,作为一名游戏设计师,你可以也应该考虑你的受众,而不必受制于市场。但即使你要免费赠送你的游戏,我也希望你希望人们看到你的作品。如果你是一个计划以制作游戏为生的人,那么你——或者你的同事——能够弄清楚这一点至关重要如何与那些可能给你钱让你玩你的游戏的人建立联系。

In the business world, the process of connecting with people who might want a product is called marketing. I realized early in my career that considering our audience and having good marketing is an important part of making games. Now, as a game designer you can and should think about your audience without necessarily being beholden to a market. But even if you’re going to give your game away for free, I hope that you would like people to see your work. If you are someone who plans to make their living from making games, then it’s crucial that you—or someone you work with—can figure out how you’re going to connect with people who might give you money for the opportunity to play your game.

我认为我们不需要玩世不恭地进行营销。营销可以帮助我们接触那些可能因为先入为主的观念而根本不会考虑玩某个游戏的人。正如马克·塞尼告诉我的那样,“我认为,当更多的受众(他们可能对游戏宣传不感兴趣)接触并爱上游戏时,我们的成功最为显著。”创意营销人员可以通过展示我们的游戏值得他们喜爱的地方来帮助我们接触受众。

I don’t think that we need to approach marketing cynically. Marketing can help us reach people who wouldn’t even consider playing a certain game, perhaps because of their preconceptions. As Mark Cerny told me, “I think we succeed most dramatically when a larger audience—that wouldn’t be interested in the game pitch—comes into contact with and falls in love with the game.” Creative marketers can help us to reach audiences by showing what there is for them to love about our game.

这些“潜在受众”描述是定位声明的一种简单形式,是营销专业人士使用的工具,我从同事 Jim Huntley 那里学到了这一点。Jim 是一名营销和品牌管理顾问,在多个行业拥有超过 20 年的经验,其中包括在游戏发行商 THQ 工作 5 年。他告诉我,创意阶段的最后阶段是制定定位声明的好时机,定位声明简要描述可能构成您的受众的群体、他们的喜好或需求,以及您希望他们如何看待您的游戏,也许是从品牌形象的角度。您可以在网上找到有关创建定位声明的信息,或者联系营销专业人士。

These “possible audience” descriptions are a simple form of positioning statement, a tool used by marketing professionals which I learned about from my colleague Jim Huntley. Jim is a marketing and brand management consultant with over twenty years of experience across multiple industries, including five years at game publisher THQ. He told me that the end of ideation is a good time to develop a positioning statement, which briefly describes a group that could make up your audience, their likes or needs, and how you want them to perceive your game, maybe in terms of its brand identity. You can find information online about creating a positioning statement, or reach out to a marketing professional.

您还可以从社区的角度考虑游戏的受众:寻找、交流并积极培养游戏社区。社区管理如今已成为游戏行业中一个成熟且备受尊重的部门。它处于营销、社交媒体、在线审核和游戏开发的交汇处。随着游戏越来越不像盒装产品,而越来越像拥有活跃、参与度高的社区的实时服务,社区经理的作用变得越来越重要,对于玩家来说,社区经理的作用已经模糊了他们对游戏本身的体验。

You can also think about the audience for your game in terms of community: finding, communicating with, and positively cultivating a community around your game. Community management is now a mature and well-respected part of the game industry. It exists at the intersection of marketing, social media, online moderation, and game development. As games become less like boxed products and more like live services with an active, engaged community, the role of community managers becomes ever more important, and for players blurs into their experience of the game itself.

您可以使用人口统计学、心理统计学和所谓的市场规模来详细了解游戏的潜在受众。您可以在本书的网站 playfulproductionprocess.com 上阅读这些内容。在设想游戏受众时,考虑可比性也很有用 — “这将吸引喜欢(某个游戏、电影、电视节目、书籍或漫画)的人。”许多有创造力的人在研究新作品时会考虑现有技术。

You can learn more about the possible audience for your game using demographics, psychographics, and something called market sizing. You can read about these on this book’s website, playfulproductionprocess.com. It’s also useful to consider comparables when imagining audiences for your game—“This will appeal to people who like (a certain game, movie, TV show, book, or comic).” Many creative people do this by considering prior art when they’re doing research for a new piece of work.

在构思结束时,有时只需想象游戏的潜在受众就足够了。真正找到并与受众交谈将在之后进行。在整个开发过程中,每次完成“我们游戏的潜在受众是…… ”这句话时,您就会更了解您的游戏以及您的游戏测试者喜欢它的原因,并且练习会对您来说更轻松。

At the end of ideation, it’s sometimes enough just to imagine the potential audience for your game. Actually finding and talking with your audience will come later. Each time throughout development you complete the sentence “The possible audience for our game is ” you will know more about your game and what your playtesters enjoyed about it, and the exercise will flow more easily for you.

有很多书籍介绍了在游戏开发过程中需要同时进行的所有营销工作,以便成功推出游戏。Joel Dreskin 的《独立游戏营销实用指南》和Peter Zackariasson 和 Mikolaj Dymek 合著的《视频游戏营销:学生教科书》是两本很好的参考书。

There are books about all the marketing work that needs to be done in parallel with a game’s development, in order to launch a game successfully. Joel Dreskin’s A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing and Video Game Marketing: A Student Textbook by Peter Zackariasson and Mikolaj Dymek are two good references.

成为专业游戏平台的开发者

Becoming a Developer for a Specialized Game Platform

如果您的设计目标之一是为索尼、微软或任天堂等平台持有者制造的主机开发游戏,或者要在 Apple 生态系统的移动平台上发布游戏,那么您必须在开发过程开始时申请成为该平台的开发者。开发主机游戏通常需要特殊的开发工具包(一种可以连接到计算机进行开发和调试的主机硬件版本),因此开发者与平台持有者之间的关系始于开发者申请为该平台开发并获得所需的“开发工具包”时。

If one of your design goals is to create a game for a console made by a platform holder like Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo, or which is to be released on a mobile platform in the Apple ecosystem, then you must apply to become a developer for that platform toward the beginning of your development process. Developing a console game usually requires a special development kit—a version of the console hardware that can be connected to a computer for development and debugging purposes—so the relationship between a developer and a platform holder begins when the developer applies to develop for the platform and to receive the “dev kits” they need.

构思阶段结束后是开始规划的好时机,你应该意识到获得批准的过程可能漫长而复杂。各个平台的细节各不相同,你应该做大量研究,以确切了解你需要做些什么才能获得平台开发者的批准。平台持有者已经努力使申请流程变得友好,但要尽早开始,甚至比你认为需要的更早开始。

The end of ideation is a good time to start planning for this, and you should be aware that the process of getting approved can be long and complex. The details vary from platform to platform, and you should do plenty of research to find out exactly what you need to do to get approved as a developer for your platform. The platform holders have worked hard to make the application process friendly, but start early, and start even earlier than you think you need to.

为了获得开发者的批准,您需要提交要发布的游戏的提案以及一些有关您团队的信息。一旦获得批准,您将可以访问为该平台开发游戏所需的资源,包括开发工具包、技术文档以及有关发布批准和发布流程的信息。我们将在第 34 章中回到专业游戏平台的主题。利用您从平台持有者那里学到的关于为其硬件开发的知识,将其融入本书中描述的流程中,这样您就可以在您梦想的平台上发布您的游戏了。

In order to be approved as a developer, you submit a proposal for the game you want to release, along with some information about your team. Once you’ve been approved, you will gain access to the resources you need to develop for the platform, including development kits, technical documentation, and information about the release approval and publishing process. We’ll return to the subject of specialized game platforms in chapter 34. Use what you learn from the platform holder about developing for their hardware, fold it into the processes described in this book, and you should be on track for releasing your game on the platform of your dreams.

关于制定项目目标的建议

Advice about Forming Your Project Goals

仔细考虑你的项目目标,并尝试遵循你从制作原型中学到的东西。不要忽视成功的原型!遵循原型中玩家积极反应的某些东西通常是件好事,即使它会让你偏离最初的想法。你不会放弃那些想法:制作的原型得到了良好的反应,即使你偶然发现了它,新的方向也是你真实的一部分。

Think carefully about your project goals and try to follow what you learned from making your prototypes. Don’t ignore a successful prototype! It’s often good to follow something in a prototype that players reacted to in a positive way, even if it leads you away from your original ideas. You’re not selling out on those ideas: you made the prototype that got a good reaction, and even if you stumbled upon it, the new direction is an authentic part of you.

如果您在选择项目目标时遇到困难,请回顾您最初的头脑风暴和研究。一旦您构建了一些原型,一个想法的最初火花通常会有所不同。写一份项目目标的草稿,然后向您的团队和老板、您的同事和朋友或您的教授和同学征求反馈。至少一两次迭代您的项目目标是一种很好的方式,可以让您对想要构建的游戏有一个非常清晰的高概念视图。

Go back to your initial brainstorms and research if you’re having a hard time choosing your project goals. The first sparks of an idea often look different once you’ve built some prototypes. Write a rough draft of your project goals, and then ask for feedback on them from your team and bosses, your peers and friends, or your professor and classmates. Iterating on your project goals at least once or twice is a great way of arriving at a very clear high-concept view of the game you want to build.

在设定项目目标时,你可能需要与业务合作伙伴合作。游戏设计师很少能完全独立,除非他们自筹资金或加入学生团队。发挥你最好的协作技能,找到项目让出钱的人感到兴奋的目标,也让你感到兴奋的目标。

You may well have to collaborate with business partners when setting your project goals. Game designers rarely have complete independence unless they’re self-financed or on a student team. Bring your best collaborative skills to the table to find project goals that the people putting up the money can be excited about, and that you’re excited about too.

设定项目目标是游戏团队领导层的重要职责。希望每个人都能为游戏项目目标做出贡献,但团队领导层的职责是帮助确定在空想和研究中哪些是有趣的,将看似相互冲突的想法综合成每个人都能支持的新想法,并帮助确定原型中哪些是有效的。领导层的职责还包括帮助团队找到方法克服实现项目目标过程中的挑战,并专注于他们设定的创意方向。正如 Mark Cerny 提醒我的那样:“一位伟大的创意总监(或游戏总监)会不断挑战团队,推动他们朝着那个特殊的方向前进。”

Setting the goals for a project is an important responsibility of a game team’s leadership. Hopefully everyone will have a voice in contributing to the game’s project goals, but it’s the role of the team’s leadership to help identify what’s interesting in the blue sky thinking and research, to synthesize seemingly conflicting ideas into new ideas that everyone can get behind, and to help identify what’s working in the prototypes. It’s also leadership’s role to help the team find a way through the challenges along the path to realizing the project goals and to stay focused on the creative direction they set. As Mark Cerny reminded me: “A great creative director (or game director) will constantly challenge the team, pushing them in that special direction.”

您的项目目标将指导您完成整个项目,但不要想太多。我们会在预生产结束时再次检查它们,看看是否需要修改。即使您已经做出了决定,您也可以保持方法的灵活性。我们几乎完成了项目的构思阶段,我们将在下一章中总结。

Your project goals will guide you throughout your project, but don’t overthink them. We’ll check in on them again at the end of preproduction, to see if they need revision. Even when you’ve committed to a decision, you can remain flexible in your approach. We’re almost done with the ideation phase of our project, and we’ll wrap things up in the next chapter.

  1. 1 . Fullerton,游戏设计工作室,第 2 版,10。

  2. 1.  Fullerton, Game Design Workshop, 2nd ed., 10.

  3. 2. Fullerton,游戏设计工作室,第 4 版,252。

  4. 2.  Fullerton, Game Design Workshop, 4th ed., 252.

  5. 3. “体验”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience

  6. 3.  “Experience,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experience.

  7. 4. Huizinga,《游戏人》;Carse,《有限游戏与无限游戏》。

  8. 4.  Huizinga, Homo Ludens; Carse, Finite and Infinite Games.

  9. 5. Gary Penn,GDC Microtalks 2010:十位演讲者、200 张幻灯片、无限创意!https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012271/GDC-Microtalks-2010-Ten-Speakers,17 :01。

  10. 5.  Gary Penn, GDC Microtalks 2010: Ten Speakers, 200 Slides, Limitless Ideas!, https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1012271/GDC-Microtalks-2010-Ten-Speakers, 17:01.

 

 

8 构思的终结

8    The End of Ideation

在构思阶段的一开始,我们应该通过空想、研究和原型设计来强调自由探索。在构思进行到一半时,我们应该开始关注我们最喜欢的想法和我们最大的原型设计成功之处。也许这意味着要放弃一些有希望的东西,因为很快就要确定方向了。在构思阶段结束时,我们必须做出选择:我们最喜欢哪个想法,哪个原型为我们的游戏指明了前进的方向?

At the very start of the ideation phase, our emphasis should be on free exploration expressed through blue sky thinking, research, and prototyping. By halfway through ideation, we should start getting oriented to our favorite ideas and our biggest prototyping successes. Maybe that means leaving some promising things behind because it will soon be time to set a direction. By the end of the ideation phase, we must choose: which of our ideas do we like the most, and which of our prototypes have shown us a path forward for our game?

构思阶段应该持续多长时间?

How Long Should the Ideation Phase Last?

在我工作的工作室里,我们没有正式的构思阶段,但在顽皮狗,我们肯定有一个非正式的构思阶段,通常是在我们夏末发布上一款游戏和一月份冬歇期回来之间的三到四个月内。

We didn’t have a formal ideation phase at the studios I worked at, but we certainly had an informal ideation phase at Naughty Dog, usually in the three or four months between shipping our previous game in late summer and getting back from the winter break in January.

这让我们有机会在相对低压力的氛围中进行一些研发。各个领域的人们都有时间自由发挥他们感兴趣的想法,这也是尝试新工具和新技术的好时机。在发布游戏时,你经常会得到很多好主意,这些主意当时可能没有用,但对你的下一款游戏来说可能很有用。下一款游戏的总监将开始制定一些核心想法,并迅速吸引团队中的其他人参与这项工作。

This gave us the chance to do some R&D (research and development) in a relatively low-pressure atmosphere. People across every discipline had time to play around freely with ideas they were excited about, and it was a good time to try new tools and techniques. You often get a lot of good ideas as you’re shipping a game that aren’t useful right then but could be great for your next game. The next game’s directors would begin to work up some core ideas and would quickly draw other people from around the team into that work.

《神秘海域 2》《神秘海域 3》都是为期两年的项目,我估计我们在整个项目时间线中花了大约 15% 的时间处于构思阶段。在南加州大学的课堂上,我让学生在构思上花费的时间也差不多。你的项目需要多少构思时间才合适取决于你自己。如果你有充裕的时间,那么花更长的时间进行构思也许是件好事,尤其是当你想做一些真正具有创新性的事情时。

Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 were two-year projects, and I estimate we spent about 15 percent of their total project timelines in a phase that felt like ideation. In my classes at USC, I have my students spend around the same amount of time in ideation. How much ideation time is right for your project will depend on you. If you have the luxury of time, then perhaps spending longer in ideation could be good, especially if you’re trying to do something truly innovative.

不过,我建议你为构思阶段设定一个“时间限制”。给自己一个有限且固定的时间进行构思。不要让它永远飘忽不定。时间限制将帮助你保持专注,并为项目的开始提供能量。我将在第 11 章中更多地讨论时间限制。

I would recommend that you “timebox” your ideation phase, though. Give yourself a limited and fixed amount of time for ideation. Don’t let it drift on forever. The time limit will help you stay focused and will give an energetic boost to the beginning of the project. I’ll talk more about timeboxing in chapter 11.

关于原型设计的一些最终建议

Some Final Advice about Prototyping

制作尽可能多的原型,尽可能广泛、深入、快速和彻底地探索您的想法,使用实体原型、玩具模拟和快速、专注的数字原型制作。通过制作、构建、创造和持续不断的游戏测试,从尽可能多的不同角度探索您头脑风暴的想法。

Make as many prototypes as you can, and explore your ideas as widely, as deeply, as quickly, and as radically as you can, with physical prototypes, playacting with toys, and fast, focused digital prototyping. Explore the ideas that you brainstorm up from as many different angles as you can, by making, building, creating, and constant, constant playtesting.

如果你刚刚开始游戏设计实践并希望获得更多指导,你可以在 Tracy Fullerton 的书《游戏设计工作室》了解有关纸质原型和数字原型的更多信息。1在下一节“预生产”中,我将详细介绍如何使用在构思阶段制作的物理原型和数字原型。

If you’re just setting out in your game design practice and want more instruction, you can learn a lot more about paper prototyping and digital prototyping in Tracy Fullerton’s book Game Design Workshop.1 I’ll talk more about how we can use the physical and digital prototypes we make during the ideation phase in the next section, on preproduction.

创意交付成果摘要

A Summary of the Ideation Deliverables

图 8.1简要概括了游戏项目构思阶段应交付的成果,以帮助您保持正轨。

Figure 8.1 shows a short summary of the deliverables due throughout the ideation phase of a game project, to help you to stay on track.

图 8.1

Figure 8.1

  1. 1 . Fullerton,游戏设计工作室,第 4 版。

  2. 1.  Fullerton, Game Design Workshop, 4th ed.

 

 

第二阶段:前期制作——边做边设计

Phase Two: Preproduction—Designing by Doing

 

 

9 掌控流程

9    Gaining Control of the Process

正确地获得对设计过程的控制往往会让人感觉失去了对设计过程的控制。

—Matthew Frederick,《我在建筑学校学到的 101 件事》

Properly gaining control of the design process tends to feel like one is losing control of the design process.

—Matthew Frederick, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School

我参与制作的第一款原创游戏是世嘉 Genesis(或世嘉 Mega Drive,取决于您所在的地方)的Tinhead,它只有一个项目阶段:制作。说实话,我甚至不确定我们怎么称呼它,但事实就是如此。我们只是开始构建游戏并一直工作直到完成。我们猜测这款游戏需要六个月才能完成——我们最终在 18 个月后完成了它,我们不得不加班加点地完成它,加班到深夜和周末。可悲的是,这是我职业生涯中第一次加班。几年后,我参与的第一个有多个项目阶段的项目是Soul Reaver ,这也是我与神秘海域游戏总监兼创意总监艾米·亨尼格的第一次合作。

The first original game that I worked on, Tinhead for the Sega Genesis (or Sega Mega Drive, depending on where you live) had only one project phase: production. To be honest, I’m not even sure we called it that, but that’s what it was. We just started building the game and worked until we finished it. We guessed that the game would take us six months to build—we finally finished it after eighteen months, and we had to crunch to finish it, working late nights and weekends. Sadly, this would be the first of many crunches in my career. A few years later, the first project I worked on that had more than one project phase was Soul Reaver, which also marked the first of my many collaborations with Uncharted game director and creative director Amy Hennig.

受到电影制作过程的启发,我们尝试通过一个称为预制作的规划期来更好地控制《噬魂者》。我们在预制作期间做了很多准备,制作了概念图和测试关卡,并开始在纸上和原型上规划游戏设计。但我们仍然在游戏的整体时间表上挣扎——我们错过了一些有助于项目保持正轨的预制作关键方面。最终,我们发现预制作是游戏项目中最重要的阶段,良好的预制作阶段将为项目的成功奠定基础。

Inspired by what we’d read about the development of movies, we attempted to bring Soul Reaver under better control with a planning period called preproduction. We did a lot of good preparation during preproduction, making concept art and test levels, and starting to plan our game’s design on paper and with prototypes. But we still struggled with our game’s overall timeline—we’d missed some key aspects of preproduction that would have helped our project stay on track. Eventually, we figured out that preproduction is the most important phase of a game project, and that a good preproduction phase will set a project up for success.

装配线和瀑布

The Assembly Line and Waterfall

亨利·福特 (Henry Ford) 借鉴了兰塞姆·伊莱·奥兹 (Ransom Eli Olds)(奥兹莫比尔汽车公司创始人)的理念,发明了移动装配线(有时称为生产线),彻底改变了汽车的工业生产方式。汽车的设计由工程师制定,每辆汽车都是在装配线上分阶段制造的,从底盘开始,然后加上发动机、油箱、车轮、车身以及制造汽车所需的一切。

Building on the ideas of Ransom Eli Olds (of Oldsmobile fame), Henry Ford revolutionized the industrial production of the automobile by inventing the moving assembly line (sometimes called a production line). A plan for a car is devised by engineers, and each car is built on the assembly line in stages, starting with the chassis and then adding an engine, fuel tank, wheels, bodywork, and everything else needed to make the car complete.

随着时间的推移,流水线的理念在计算机科学领域得到了体现,即“瀑布模型”,这是 20 世纪 50 年代中期出现的一种软件设计方法(尽管“瀑布”一词直到 20 世纪 70 年代才出现)。瀑布背后的理念与流水线的理念基本相同:设计师和工程师仔细思考,然后为将要构建的软件编写一份全面的规范(“spec”)。然后,他们制定实施该规范的计划,并将这两份文件传递给软件工程师团队,他们分阶段、逐个部分地严格按照给出的说明创建最终程序。

Over time, the idea of the assembly line found expression in the world of computer science with the “waterfall model,” an approach to software design that appeared in the mid-1950s (although the term waterfall didn’t appear until the 1970s). The idea behind waterfall is essentially the same as that of an assembly line: designers and engineers think carefully and then write a comprehensive specification (“spec”) for the software that will be built. They then create a plan for implementing the spec, and both documents are passed to a team of software engineers who create the finished program in stages, piece by piece, carefully following the instructions they’ve been given.

从 20 世纪 80 年代末开始,负责游戏项目管理的人们开始转向这种瀑布式开发方法,这种方法在商业软件开发领域被广泛使用,因为他们迫切希望在时间、人力和资金方面控制好项目。20 世纪 80 年代游戏界的“卧室开发者”,即当时的独立游戏开发者,通常非常年轻,忙于发明一种艺术形式。他们自由、直观地工作,但往往不正常,他们通过持续的加班来强行完成项目,连续几个月不休息,每天醒着的时候都在工作。有时项目可以按时高质量完成——但通常项目会严重超出时间和预算,或者根本无法完成。在许多情况下,这些项目严重损害了创造者的身心健康。

Beginning in the late 1980s, people tasked with the project management of games looked toward these waterfall development methods, which were widely used in the world of business software development, as they desperately sought to bring their projects under control in terms of time, person-power, and money. The “bedroom developers” of the 1980s game scene, the indie game developers of their day, were often very young and were busy inventing an art form. They worked freely, intuitively, but often dysfunctionally, brute-forcing their projects to completion with sustained crunches, working every waking hour for months on end without a day off. Sometimes the projects came in on time and to high quality—and very often they ran wildly over time and budget, or never reached completion at all. In many cases, the projects burned their creators badly, shattering their mental and physical health.

因此,也许这并不奇怪,当时的游戏制作人开始梦想全面的游戏设计文档,宏大的整体规范将预先定义所有内容,随时可以转化为资产和任务列表,以便可以像汽车或洗衣机一样在装配线上创建游戏,在时间、金钱和所需的人数方面是可预测的。

So perhaps it’s not surprising that the game producers of the day started to dream about comprehensive game design documents, grand monolithic specifications that would define everything up front, ready to be turned into lists of assets and tasks, so that a game could be created on an assembly line like a car or a washing machine, predictable in terms of the time, money, and number of people needed.

好梦。但在大多数电子游戏案例中,瀑布式开发并不奏效,至少在游戏创作的早期阶段是如此。当然,可预测的预算和时间表对于项目的整个制作阶段非常重要,但瀑布式开发方法中包含的良好规划意图通常会被发现您正在设计的游戏的优点的过程中的不确定性所劫持。

Nice dream. But in most videogame cases, waterfall just doesn’t work, at least not for the early stages of game creation. Of course, predictable budgets and schedules are very important for the full production phase of a project, but the good planning intentions contained in a waterfall approach are often hijacked by the uncertainties of the process of discovering what’s good about the game that you’re trying to design.

创造新事物

Making Something New

如果你正在以可靠的模式制作游戏,并且已经确定了行之有效的游戏机制,那么瀑布方法的元素可能会奏效。但是当你在努力做新事情时该怎么办?你还不确定游戏的所有部分如何组合在一起——哪些部分会很棒,需要放大,哪些部分效果不佳,需要背景化或从游戏中完全移除?

If you’re making a game in a reliable pattern, with well-established game mechanics that you already know work well, then elements of the waterfall approach could work. But what about when you’re struggling to do something new? Something where you’re not yet sure how all the pieces of your game fit together—which parts will prove to be great and need amplifying, and which parts don’t work so well and need backgrounding or removing from the game altogether?

我认为制作游戏的正确方法与画家创作绘画的方法有很多相似之处。我们先画草图,然后扩展我们最初的想法,然后埋头读书、做研究,最后我们就可以拿起画布,用炭笔画草图了。然后我们开始在草图上涂上油彩来创作一幅完成的画作。有时,当我们画到一半的时候,它就会有自己的生命,并引导我们走向我们未曾预料到的新方向。

It’s my belief that the right way to make games has a lot in common with the way a painter makes a painting. We do preliminary sketches, we expand our original ideas, we stick our noses in books and do research, and eventually we’re ready to grab a canvas and draw sketches in charcoal. We then start to use oil paint over the sketches to create a finished painting. Sometimes, when we’re halfway through the painting, it takes on a life of its own and leads us in new directions that we hadn’t anticipated.

我们已经在构思部分中研究了电子游戏创作的研究和草图部分。现在是时候看看开发过程了,除了原型的炭笔草图之外,在游戏项目的预生产阶段,使用迭代设计流程用油画充实原型。

We already looked at the research and sketching parts of the creation of a videogame in our section on ideation. Now it’s time to take a look at the process of developing beyond the charcoal sketches of our prototypes, fleshing them out with oil paint during the preproduction phase of a game project, using an iterative design process.

前期制作期间的规划

Planning during Preproduction

良好的规划有助于许多(或许是大多数)创意活动取得成功。但游戏设计由无数决策组成,涉及大量资产、代码片段和其他活动部件。我们不可能一一列出并规划好所有可能发生的情况。良好的规划并不一定意味着更多的规划。游戏设计师如何才能做好足够的规划,让他们能够理解游戏设计,并制定切实可行的项目计划,从而获得成功?

Good planning contributes to success in many—maybe most—acts of creativity. But a game’s design is made up of an uncountable number of decisions, involving a vast number of assets, pieces of code, and other moving parts. We couldn’t possibly list them all and plan for every contingency. Good planning doesn’t necessarily equate with more planning. How can game designers do just enough planning to set themselves up for success with a game design that they understand, and a project plan that is realistic and realizable?

预生产是项目的一个阶段,在这个阶段,我们会规划游戏的设计和制作——游戏将会是什么样的,以及我们计划如何管理项目。但规划可能是一个陷阱,它会浪费我们宝贵的开发时间,让我们陷入思考和讨论,犹豫不决,反复改变主意。我们陷入了想象事情的细节中,后来才发现我们并不需要,我们完全忽略了超出我们想象但最终被证明是至关重要的东西。

Preproduction is the phase of the project when we plan our game’s design and production—what the game is going to be and how we plan to manage the project. But planning can be a trap, sucking away our valuable development time as we ponder and discuss, as we hesitate to commit and repeatedly change our minds. We get caught up in imagining details of things that we’ll later discover we don’t need, and we completely overlook things that are beyond our imagining but will prove to be essential.

《我在建筑学校学到的 101 件事》这本深受游戏设计师喜爱的书中,作者兼建筑师 Matthew Frederick 说道:

In 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, a book beloved by game designers, the author and architect Matthew Frederick says:

设计过程通常是结构化和有条不紊的,但它不是一个机械的过程。机械过程有预先确定的结果,但创造性过程力求创造一些以前不存在的东西。真正的创造性意味着你不知道自己要去哪里,即使你负责引导这个过程。这需要与传统的授权控制不同的东西;松散的天鹅绒系绳更有可能有所帮助。1

The design process is often structured and methodical, but it is not a mechanical process. Mechanical processes have predetermined outcomes, but the creative process strives to produce something that has not existed before. Being genuinely creative means that you don’t know where you are going, even though you are responsible for shepherding the process. This requires something different from conventional, authorization control; a loose velvet tether is more likely to help.1

这是非常好的建议;它非常符合整本书的精神,而且在我们谈论规划时非常有用。我们需要规划,但游戏设计师如何在过多的规划和不足的规划之间找到平衡?我在顽皮狗从我的朋友兼导师马克·塞尼那里得到了这个问题的答案。

This is great advice; it’s very much in the spirit of this whole book, and it’s highly informative when we’re talking about planning. We need to plan, but how can game designers find a balance between too much planning and not enough? I got the answer to this question at Naughty Dog from my friend and mentor Mark Cerny.

马克·塞尼和方法

Mark Cerny and Method

Mark Cerny 是一名游戏设计师、开发者和高管,他的职业生涯始于 20 世纪 80 年代初,17 岁时加入 Atari。受到迷你高尔夫、赛车游戏和 MC Escher 的启发,Mark 设计并共同编写了极具创新性的街机游戏《Marble Madness》。接下来,他在日本世嘉公司工作,为世嘉 Master System 和世嘉 Genesis 开发游戏,之后回到美国创立世嘉技术学院,并成为《刺猬索尼克 2》的项目负责人。后来,他成为环球互动工作室的副总裁,然后担任总裁。

Mark Cerny is a game designer, developer, and executive who began his career in the early 1980s, joining Atari at the age of seventeen. Inspired by miniature golf, racing games, and M. C. Escher, Mark designed and coprogrammed the wildly innovative arcade game Marble Madness. Next he worked at Sega in Japan, creating games for the Sega Master System and Sega Genesis, before returning to the United States to found the Sega Technical Institute and become project leader on Sonic the Hedgehog 2. He later became vice president and then president of Universal Interactive Studios.

在 Universal Interactive,马克认识了两位年轻的游戏开发者,分别是 Jason Rubin 和 Andy Gavin。Jason 和 Andy 在高中时就创办了一家游戏工作室,他们将其命名为 JAM Games(代表“Jason and Andy Magic”的意思),但不久之后,他们就将工作室改名为顽皮狗。

At Universal Interactive, Mark met two young game developers called Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin. Jason and Andy had founded a game studio while still in high school—they called it JAM Games (for “Jason and Andy Magic”)—but it wouldn’t be long before they renamed themselves Naughty Dog.

马克认可杰森和安迪的才华——他们已经创作了相当多的成功数字游戏,包括《Keef the Thief》《Rings of Power》。顽皮狗与马克合作创作了他们的第一款国际热门游戏《Crash Bandicoot》,马克将健康的开发流程带入了顽皮狗、Insomniac Games 和许多其他团队,并带来了高质量的游戏。

Mark recognized Jason and Andy’s talent—they had already created a respectable number of successful digital games, including Keef the Thief and Rings of Power. Naughty Dog collaborated with Mark to create their first international smash hit, Crash Bandicoot, and Mark brought healthy development processes resulting in high-quality games to his future work with Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, and many other teams.

作为一名游戏高管,马克一直亲力亲为,帮助设计游戏关卡和机制,并指导游戏开发过程,这在某种程度上与游戏高管不同。他在《神秘海域》系列的开发过程中给予了我很大的帮助。马克现在是索尼互动娱乐的高级顾问,曾担任 PlayStation 4 和 PlayStation 5 的首席架构师。

Somewhat unusually for a game executive, Mark has remained hands-on as a developer, helping to create levels and mechanics for games as well as guiding their development process, and he helped me with much of my work on the Uncharted series. Mark now works as a senior consultant for Sony Interactive Entertainment and was the lead architect of the PlayStation 4 and the PlayStation 5.

2002 年,在拉斯维加斯举行的 DICE 峰会上,马克·塞尼发表了一次具有历史意义的演讲,开启了游戏行业的一场悄无声息的革命。这场演讲的标题很简单,叫做“方法”,它是游戏设计智慧、良好实践、恰当批评和规划建议的源泉。2清楚地列出了以更好的方式制作出色游戏的流程。每个游戏开发者和游戏学生都应该至少看一次这个演讲。

In 2002, at the D.I.C.E. Summit in Las Vegas, Mark Cerny gave a history-making talk that began a quiet revolution in the games industry. Simply titled “Method,” the talk is a wellspring of game design wisdom, good practice, apt criticism, and planning advice.2 It clearly lays out a process for making great games in a better way. Every game developer and game student should watch this talk at least once.

Method 是 Mark 和他的同事、游戏设计师兼教育家 Michael “MJ” John 在与游戏工作室合作时观察到的最佳工作实践后整理出来的一种游戏制作方法。Method 提出的一些建议非常激进,甚至可以说是异端邪说,当 Mark 断言预生产不能按计划进行,否则将无法成功时,您可以听到礼堂里游戏总监和商业领袖的惊叹声、笑声和掌声。

Method is an approach to making games that Mark and his colleague the game designer and educator Michael “MJ” John had codified as they observed best working practices in their collaborations with game studios. Several of the things proposed by Method were radical, even heretical, and you can hear the gasps, laughter, and applause from the game directors and business leaders in the auditorium as Mark asserts that preproduction can’t be scheduled, or it won’t work.

值得注意的是,马克在 2002 年发表了方法论演讲,就在敏捷联盟发布“软件开发敏捷宣言”的一年后。3方法论和敏捷之间有许多哲学上的对应关系,因为它们都建议采用“松散但结构化”的方法来制作出色的软件。因此,它们很容易配对,我们将在后面的章节中看到。

It’s interesting to note that Mark gave the Method talk in 2002, just a year after the Agile Alliance published their “Agile Manifesto for Software Development.”3 There are many philosophical correspondences between Method and Agile, in that they both recommend a “loose but structured” approach to making great software. As such they are easy to pair, as we’ll see in later chapters.

预生产的价值

The Value of Preproduction

我认为前期制作是最重要的项目阶段,Mark Cerny 在他的演讲中说,当一个项目陷入困境时,最常见的原因是前期制作做得不恰当或完全跳过了。“我相信 80% 的游戏开发错误——我并不夸张——都是由预制作中完成或未完成的事情直接导致的。” 4 Mark 继续说道,“预制作不需要庞大的团队,但需要你最好的、可能是薪水最高的员工。这个核心团队将决定你的游戏的所有重要方面,并且很可能成为你的制作团队领导者。所以尽早找到最好的人才。” 5

I believe that preproduction is the most important project phase, and in his talk Mark Cerny says that when a project gets into trouble, it’s most often because preproduction was done improperly or skipped altogether. “I believe that 80 percent—I’m not exaggerating—of mistakes in game development are a direct result of things that were done, or not done, in preproduction.”4 Mark goes on to say, “Preproduction does not require a large team, but it does require your best and probably your highest paid staff. This core team will determine everything that’s important about your game, and most likely become your team leaders in production. So get the best people you can possibly find and get them early.”5

我们通过思考,但主要是通过实践,来制定游戏的所有最基本方面。就像构思一样,构建事物有助于我们发展我们的想法。我们将多次回顾方法的哲学和实践,但现在让我们谈谈实际情况:在预制作期间我们要做什么我们将创建三个关键可交付成果:垂直切片、游戏设计宏和时间表。

We work out all the most essential aspects of the game partly by thinking but mainly by doing. Just as in ideation, it’s building things that helps us to develop our ideas. We’ll come back to the philosophy and practices of Method several times, but now let’s get down to brass tacks: what are we going to do during preproduction? We’re going to create three key deliverables: a vertical slice, a game design macro, and a schedule.

  1. 1 . Frederick,《我在建筑学校学到的 101 件事》,81。

  2. 1.  Frederick, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, 81.

  3. 2. Mark Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=QOAW9ioWAvE 。

  4. 2.  Mark Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOAW9ioWAvE.

  5. 3. Ken Schwaber,“敏捷软件开发宣言”,2001 年,https://agilemanifesto.org/

  6. 3.  Ken Schwaber, “Manifesto for Agile Software Development,” 2001, https://agilemanifesto.org/.

  7. 4. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,3:40。

  8. 4.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 3:40.

  9. 5. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,6:26。

  10. 5.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 6:26.

 

 

10 什么是垂直切片?

10    What Is a Vertical Slice?

在过去十五年左右的时间里,垂直切片的概念在整个游戏行业中广为人知,并且很有价值。简而言之,垂直切片是游戏的高质量演示。

The concept of a vertical slice has become widely known throughout the game industry over the past fifteen years or so, and it’s a valuable one. Simply put, a vertical slice is a high-quality demo of your game.

垂直切片已经打磨到游戏设计、图形、声音设计、控制方案、视觉效果及其所有元素都具有足够高的质量,我们可以认为它们已经完成。它之所以被称为垂直切片,是因为它包含了所有重要的东西。想象一下一个蛋糕,上面交替着海绵、生奶油、覆盆子果酱和巧克力甘纳许。当你吃一块蛋糕时,各种味道混合在一起,创造出一种独特的审美体验。你不必吃掉整个蛋糕就能知道蛋糕的味道。

A vertical slice has been polished to the point where the game design, graphics, sound design, control scheme, visual effects, and all of its elements are of high enough quality that we can consider them finished. It’s called a vertical slice because it includes something of everything that’s significant. Imagine a cake with alternating layers of sponge, whipped cream, raspberry jam, and chocolate ganache. When you eat a slice of the cake, the flavors mix, creating a unique aesthetic experience. You don’t have to eat the whole cake to know what the cake tastes like.

电子游戏的垂直切片包括整个游戏体验所必需的所有(或大部分)核心功能、资产和叙事的样本。它是游戏设计的横截面快照,以可玩的形式展示了我们计划制作的游戏类型(图 10.1)。

The vertical slice of a videogame includes a sample of all (or most) of the core features, assets, and narrative that are essential to the experience of the whole game. It’s a cross-sectional snapshot of our game’s design, and demonstrates, in playable form, exactly what kind of game we’re planning to make (figure 10.1).

图 10.1

Figure 10.1

垂直切片。

A vertical slice.

核心循环

The Core Loop

许多游戏都是围绕重复模式构建的,正如 Jaime Griesemer 在其著名的“三十秒乐趣”概念中所描述的那样,该概念是Halo系列游戏玩法的基础。在单人游戏Halo中,玩家活动有一个重复的模式,你会一遍又一遍地循环。你进入一个区域,注意敌人和战利品的位置,然后寻找掩护。你瞄准敌人,逐一击败他们,沿着地图四处走动,直到最终到达出口——然后进入一个新区域,再次开始这种基本的玩家活动模式。

Many games are built around a repeating pattern, as described by Jaime Griesemer in his famous concept of the “thirty seconds of fun” underlying the gameplay of the Halo series. In the single-player game of Halo, there’s a repeating pattern of player activities that you cycle through over and over again. You enter an area, notice where the enemies and loot are, and take cover. You take aim at the enemies, defeating them one by one, and work your way around and through the map until you finally reach the exit—only to enter a new area, beginning this basic pattern of player activities again.

但这并不意味着《光环》或其他任何设计精良的游戏都是重复的。在 2011 年接受 Engadget 采访时,Jaime 表示,

However, that doesn’t mean that Halo, or any well-designed game, is repetitious. In an interview with Engadget in 2011, Jaime said,

我说过要利用那三十秒的乐趣在不同的环境中玩游戏,使用不同的武器、不同的车辆,对抗不同的敌人,对抗不同的组合。敌人,有时是与正在互相战斗的敌人对抗。Halo的 30 秒剧情从未重复;任务不断改变着你的背景。1

I talked about taking that thirty seconds of fun and playing it in different environments, with different weapons, different vehicles, against different enemies, against different combinations of enemies, sometimes against enemies that are fighting each other. No thirty second stretch of Halo is ever repeated; the missions are constantly changing the context on you.1

游戏设计师经常将此称为游戏的“核心循环”。在这种底层重复模式之上,游戏设计师和玩家之间合作创造出了无穷无尽的变化。设计师呈现了不断变化的游戏元素组合。玩家可以自由地以多种多样的方式接触游戏的每个部分。

Game designers often refer to this as the “core loop” of a game. Built on top of this underlying pattern of repetition is endless variation, appearing through a collaboration between the game’s designers and players. The designers present ever-changing combinations of game elements. Players are free to approach each part of the game in many varied ways.

垂直切片将包括至少一个代表游戏核心循环的部分,并展示我们在玩游戏时大部分时间会拥有的体验类型。

A vertical slice will include at least one section that represents the core loop of the game and shows the type of experience we’ll be having most of the time while we’re playing.

根据游戏风格,核心循环可能是《神秘海域》等角色动作游戏中的“奔跑/跳跃/攀爬”,或城市建设游戏中的“选择类型/选择区域/建造”。它可能有很多即时控制—— 《俄罗斯方块》中的“左移/右移/旋转/放下” ——或者它可能与动作距离较远,如《星际争霸》中的“选择单位/发出命令” 。

Depending on the style of game, this core loop might be “run/jump/climb” in a character-action game like Uncharted, or “choose-type/select-area/build” in a city-building game. It might have a lot of moment-to-moment control—“move-left/move-right/rotate/drop” in Tetris—or it might be at more of a distance from the action, like “select-unit/issue-command” in StarCraft.

我相信你已经意识到,创建这些核心循环的演示需要创建许多不同的游戏机制、输入方法、游戏实体和资产。对于角色动作游戏,我们不仅需要“奔跑/跳跃/攀爬”,还需要一些东西来奔跑、跳跃、攀爬。对于模拟游戏、实时战略游戏或多人在线战斗竞技场,我们需要一些实体来构建、控制和战斗。在叙事游戏中,我们需要一些角色来交谈、一些地方来参观,以及一些事件来发生。要真正了解我们的游戏玩法,我们必须看到一些可能从我们的机制中产生的最有趣的时刻。

As I’m sure you realize, creating a demonstration of these core loops requires the creation of a lot of different game mechanics, input methods, game entities, and assets. For a character-action game, we won’t just need “run/jump/climb,” we’ll need some things to run on, jump over, climb onto. For a simulation game, a real-time strategy game, or a multiplayer online battle arena, we’ll need some entities to build, control, and fight. In a narrative game, we’ll need some characters to talk to, some places to visit, and some events to have happen. To really get a sense of our gameplay, we’ll have to see some of the most interesting moments that can arise from our mechanics.

特殊序列

Special Sequences

在我们的垂直切片中,我们还应该尝试展示一些代表游戏中任何特殊序列的东西。这对于当代玩家来说可能非常具有挑战性。电子游戏通常包含大量令人难以置信的特殊任务和一次性时刻。

In our vertical slice, we should also attempt to show something representative of any special sequences in our game. This can be very challenging for contemporary videogames, which often feature a mind-boggling number of special-case missions and one-off moments.

举一个简单的例子来说明什么是理想的:《古惑狼》(早在我加入顽皮狗之前就已创建)的垂直切片有两个关卡(游戏设计术语,意为环境)。其中一个关卡展示了横向滚动游戏玩法,古惑狼跳过坑洞,砸开板条箱收集里面的 Wumpa 水果,并旋转冲向敌人将其击倒。另一个关卡展示了可以在整个完成的游戏中发现的特殊游戏玩法序列之一,古惑狼脸上带着惊慌失措的表情跑向镜头,被一块巨大的巨石追赶。

To give a simple example of what’s desirable: the vertical slice for Crash Bandicoot (created long before my time at Naughty Dog) featured two levels (a game design term meaning environments). One level showed side-scrolling gameplay, where Crash jumps over pits, smashes open crates to collect the Wumpa fruit inside, and spins into enemies to knock them out of play. The other level featured one of the special sequences of gameplay that can be found throughout the finished game, where Crash runs toward the camera with a panic-stricken look on his face, pursued by a giant boulder.

这两个可玩级别作为垂直切片放在一起,告诉顽皮狗的每个人、其发行商 Universal Interactive 以及其他对该项目有利益关系的人整个游戏会是什么样子。

These two playable levels, taken together as a vertical slice, told everyone at Naughty Dog, their publisher Universal Interactive, and anyone else who had a stake in the project just what to expect from the full game.

三个 C

The Three Cs

还有另一种方法可以了解垂直切片如何帮助我们确定游戏设计。它涉及考虑电子游戏的“三个 C”:角色、摄像头和控制。

There’s another way to look at how the vertical slice helps us to figure out our game’s design. It involves a consideration of the “three Cs” of a videogame: character, camera, and control.

特点

Character

我们需要决定谁或什么将成为我们游戏的主要玩家角色。他们长什么样?他们的声音如何?他们如何移动?他们如何表示玩家在游戏中使用的游戏机械动词?玩家角色为我们的游戏带来了哪些塑造叙事的情感品质?(需要注意的是,一些最优秀的电子游戏没有任何我们可以轻易识别为玩家角色的东西——稍后会详细介绍。)

We need to decide who or what the main player-character of our game will be. What do they look like and how do they sound? How do they move? How do they represent the game mechanical verbs that the player will use in the game? What narrative-shaping emotional qualities does the player-character bring to our game? (It’s important to note that some of the finest videogames don’t have anything that we could easily identify as a player-character—more on that in a moment.)

玩家角色是游戏世界中扮演玩家行为的化身。游戏设计师有时会将此角色称为“玩家”,但要小心——在我们的设计讨论中,还有另一个玩家需要考虑和讨论:拿着游戏控制器、敲击键盘或操控鼠标的人,充满想法和感受、计划和误解。如果您始终能够完全清楚您指的是游戏中的人类玩家还是游戏中的玩家角色,那么您作为游戏设计师的能力将更强。

The player-character is the avatar that enacts the player’s actions in the game world. Game designers will sometimes refer to this character as the “player,” but be wary—there is another player to consider and to talk about in our design discussions: the person holding a game controller, hitting a keyboard, or guiding a mouse, full of ideas and feelings, plans and misapprehensions. You’ll have more ability as a game designer if it’s always completely clear whether you’re referring to the human player of the game or the player-character within the game.

许多数字游戏至少有一个玩家角色,有些则有更多。对于那些似乎没有玩家角色的游戏-无论是PongTetrisSimCity还是StarCraft - 我们通常不需要费力就能找到类比。它可能是Pong中的桨或Tetris中的俄罗斯方块。也许是SimCity中的光标、区域选择和构建选项,或者是StarCraft中的光标及其选择单位和建筑物的能力。无论哪种视听元素组合最直接地受玩家即时控制,我们都应将其视为玩家角色,并且我们应该通过构建垂直切片来确定我们的角色是什么。

Many digital games have at least one player-character, and some have more. For games that don’t appear to have a player-character—whether it’s Pong, Tetris, SimCity, or StarCraft—we usually don’t have to look far to find an analogy. It could be the paddle in Pong or the tetrominos in Tetris. Perhaps it’s the cursor, zone-selection, and build options in SimCity, or the cursor and its ability to select units and buildings in StarCraft. Whatever assemblage of audiovisual elements is most directly under moment-to-moment control by the player we should consider to be the player-character, and we should figure out what ours is going to be by building a vertical slice.

相机

Camera

对于新游戏设计师来说,游戏的摄像头有时很难讨论,也很难描述其复杂性和细微差别。它是“眼不见,心不烦”的——我们通过镜头观察,我们对它有如此密切的认同,以至于我们可能没有意识到它在我们玩游戏时所做的一切。不同的游戏对摄像头的考虑截然不同。

The camera for a game is sometimes hard for new game designers to discuss, and difficult to describe in all of its complexity and nuance. It’s “out of sight, out of mind”—we look through its lens, and we have such a close identification with it that we’re probably not aware of everything that it’s doing as we play. Different games have radically different camera considerations.

  • 第一人称相机。第一人称游戏给我们提供了一个看似简单的案例,我们通过玩家角色的眼睛进行观察,鼠标控制我们的视线方向。但任何尝试编写第一人称相机代码(甚至更改其预制设置)的人很快就会发现,情况并非如此简单。鼠标移动与视线方向之间的比例关系、相机的运动(如果相机随着玩家角色的脚步摆动)、相机的视野——这些元素以及其他元素构成了这个“简单”的案例。
  • First-person cameras. First-person games give us a seemingly simple case, where we’re looking through the eyes of the player-character and the mouse controls the direction of our view. But anyone who has tried to code—or even alter the premade settings of—a first-person camera will soon discover that it’s not that simple. The proportional relationship between mouse movement and direction of view, the motion of the camera if it bobs along with the player-character’s footsteps, the camera’s field of view—these elements and more make up this “simple” case.
  • 第三人称相机。更复杂的情况是第三人称摄像机放置在距离游戏玩法较远的位置,例如 2D 横向卷轴游戏(如 NES超级马里奥兄弟)、2D 等距游戏(如堡垒或原版星际争霸)、3D 角色动作游戏(如巫师 3:狂猎)或 3D 城市建设游戏(如城市:天际线)。此摄像机会移动,因为它会跟踪玩家角色(在超级马里奥兄弟堡垒巫师 3中),或者因为它直接受玩家控制(在星际争霸城市:天际线中)。
  • Third-person cameras. A more complex case is a third-person camera that is placed at a distance from the gameplay, as in a 2D side-scrolling game like NES Super Mario Bros., 2D isometric games like Bastion or the original StarCraft, a 3D character-action game like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, or a 3D city-building game like Cities: Skylines. This camera will move either because it tracks the player-character, in Super Mario Bros., Bastion, or Witcher 3, or because it’s under the direct control of the player, in StarCraft and Cities: Skylines.

这两种选择都需要技巧。例如,横向卷轴动作游戏为玩家角色设置了一个“舞盒”:一个有限的自由移动区域,玩家角色可以在不移动摄像机的情况下移动,从而产生更流畅的摄像机行为。Itay Keren 的 2015 年 GDC 演讲和 Gamasutra 文章“回滚:横向卷轴游戏中摄像机的理论与实践”对 2D 动作游戏在寻找完美摄像机时尝试的许多不同方法进行了精彩的讨论。2

Both these options require finesse. For example, side-scrolling action games set up a “dance box” for the player-character: a limited field of free movement where the player-character can move without moving the camera, creating smoother camera behavior. Itay Keren’s 2015 GDC lecture and Gamasutra article “Scroll Back: The Theory and Practice of Cameras in Side-Scrollers,” provides an excellent discussion of the many different approaches that 2D action games have tried in their search for the perfect camera.2

巫师 3神秘海域等 3D 角色动作游戏中的第三人称摄像机给我们带来了非常复杂的情况。在这里,摄像机被放置在玩家角色附近,就像一个密切跟踪他们进度的摄像机无人机。摄像机通常由玩家直接控制(可能使用拇指杆),并且通常还受环境中不可见的触发体积的控制。这些触发体积将摄像机移动到某个高度、方向和俯仰角,以显示环境中最相关、最有趣或最美丽的部分,同时让玩家角色保持在屏幕上。有时它们会通过切换将摄像机跳转到特定位置。

The third-person cameras in 3D character-action games like Witcher 3 and Uncharted give us very complex cases. Here, the camera is placed close to the player-character, like a camera drone that follows their progress closely. The camera is usually under the player’s direct control (maybe using a thumbstick) and oftentimes it’s also under the control of invisible trigger volumes in the environment. These trigger volumes move the camera to a certain elevation, direction, and angle of pitch in order to show the most relevant, most interesting, or most beautiful parts of the environment, all the while keeping the player-character on-screen. Sometimes they jump the camera to a particular position with a cut.

这里,有一套庞大而复杂的算法来决定相机的行为,而许多由这样的设置导致的行为很容易让玩家感觉自己正在与镜头对抗。如果我们没有正确设置,镜头的运动就会感觉不连贯或迟缓——与我们在电影和电视中看到的优雅、充满活力、优美的镜头运动截然相反。

Here, there is a large and complex suite of algorithms determining the behavior of the camera, and many of the behaviors that result from a setup like this can easily make the player feel like they’re fighting the camera. If we don’t set things up just right, the camera’s motion will feel jerky or sluggish—the opposite of the elegant, energetic, graceful camera moves that we’re used to seeing in feature films and on television.

在 3D 角色动作游戏中,还有许多其他与环境相关的摄像机问题等着我们。当玩家角色靠在墙上或躲在柱子后面时会发生什么?摄像机通常不能进入墙内,否则它会向我们展示游戏图形的“外部”,打破我们电脑图形世界的幻觉,打碎玩家的怀疑。将摄像机移近或旋转可能会提供解决方案,但通常会带来更多问题:将摄像机移得太近,我们只能看到玩家角色的后脑勺,或者当玩家想看其他地方时,摄像机会指向新方向。

There are many other camera problems lying in wait for us in a 3D character-action game, relating to our environments. What happens when the player-character backs up against the wall or goes behind a column? The camera usually can’t go inside a wall, or it will show us “outside” the graphics of the game, breaking the illusion of our computer graphics world and shattering the player’s suspension of disbelief. Moving the camera in closer or rotating it around might offer solutions, but usually at the cost of a bunch more problems: moving the camera too close, giving us nothing but a view of the back of the player-character’s head, or moving the camera to point in a new direction, when the player wanted to look somewhere else.

我提出这些问题是为了让您为第一个 3D 角色动作游戏的预制作做好准备,但这些问题是可以解决的。我们喜爱的游戏的才华横溢的开发者一次又一次地向我们展示了许多出色而优雅的解决方案来应对这些挑战。只是需要时间和精力。

I bring these problems up so that you can prepare for the preproduction of your first 3D character-action game, but they are solvable. The talented developers of the games we love have shown us time and again that there are many excellent and elegant solutions to these challenges. It just takes time and effort.

因此,当我们完成垂直切片时,如果垂直切片要告诉我们有关游戏设计的基本信息,我们必须了解很多有关游戏相机如何工作的知识。

So, by the time we’ve finished our vertical slice, we must know a lot about how our game’s camera is going to work, if the vertical slice is going to do its job of telling us essential things about our game’s design.

控制

Control

控制是玩家与游戏互动的机制,玩家通过做出选择来表达自己的意志。确定游戏的控制方式部分与决定按下哪些按钮、鼠标移动和摇杆手势会导致游戏中的某些动作有关,但远不止这些。

Control is the mechanism by which the player interacts with the game, making choices that express their agency. Determining the controls of a game partly has to do with deciding what button presses, mouse motions, and thumbstick gestures will result in certain actions in the game, but there’s more to it than that.

玩家在玩游戏时所使用的代理是另一个循环的一部分,游戏设计师必须考虑这个循环。这个循环涉及玩家和游戏硬件及软件。我们将以某人使用控制器玩主机游戏为例。与任何循环一样,我们可以从任何地方开始研究它,但让我们先从玩家对游戏通过屏幕和扬声器发出的图像和声音的感知开始。

The agency that the player uses when they engage with the controls of a game is part of another loop that is very important for game designers to think about. It’s the loop involving both the player and the game’s hardware and software. We’ll use the example of someone playing a console game with a controller. As with any loop, we could examine it starting anywhere, but let’s start with the player’s perceptions of the images and sounds that the game is putting out through a screen and speakers.

玩家的感知会让他们对自己看到和听到的内容产生一些想法和感受,并做出下一步该做什么的决策过程,所有这些我们都可以归类为“认知”。然后他们会采取行动;在这个例子中,就是按下按钮或移动控制器上的拇指杆。

The player’s perceptions lead them to some thoughts and feelings about what they see and hear, and to a decision-making process about what to do next, all of which we can file under “cognition.” Then they take an action; in this example by pressing a button or moving a thumbstick on the controller.

游戏机接收此输入并将其纳入游戏不断执行的计算中。它决定在那一瞬间发生了什么,并向屏幕和扬声器发送一些新的输出,然后循环再次开始(图 10.2)。

The game console receives this input and folds it into the computation that the game is constantly performing. It decides what happened in that split second and sends some new output to the screen and speakers, and so the loop begins again (figure 10.2).

图 10.2

Figure 10.2

感知-认知-动作-输入-计算-输出循环。

The perception-cognition-action-input-computation-output loop.

由于玩家的行动基于他们对游戏的理解、他们对游戏系统的心理模型以及他们预期采取特定行动后会发生什么,我们可能会认为控制融入了游戏的每个方面。从游戏当前状态在它的图像和声音,玩家通过反复试验了解到他们可以在游戏中做什么,玩家认为游戏希望他们实现什么目标以及如果他们达到这些目标将会获得什么奖励——这些控制问题散布在游戏设计的各个地方,而不仅仅是哪些按钮可以做什么。

In that the player’s agency is based on what they understand about the game, the mental model they have of the systems on the game, and what they anticipate will happen if they take a certain action, we might see control as woven into the fabric of every aspect of the game. From the way that the game’s current state is represented in its graphics and sound, to what the player has learned through trial and error about what they can do in the game, to what goals the player thinks that the game wants them to achieve and what it will reward them with should they meet those goals—these questions of control are scattered everywhere through the game’s design and aren’t just about which buttons do what.

在他的书《游戏感觉》中,游戏设计师史蒂夫·斯温克在讨论“感知场”时将这种想法更进一步,这是一个来自心理学领域的概念。史蒂夫将这个想法归功于心理学家唐纳德·斯尼格和亚瑟·康布斯,他说:

In his book Game Feel, game designer Steve Swink takes this thinking one step further when he discusses the “perceptual field,” a concept from the world of psychology. Attributing the idea to psychologists Donald Snygg and Arthur Combs, Steve says:

感知场的概念是,感知是在之前所有经验的背景下进行的,包括我们的态度、思想、观念、幻想甚至误解。也就是说,我们不会将事物与之前发生的事情分开来感知。相反,我们通过过滤器、在背景中、在我们自己对世界的个人看法的结构中体验一切。3

The idea of the perceptual field is that perception is carried out against the backdrop of all previous experience, including our attitudes, thoughts, ideas, fantasies and even misconceptions. That is, we don’t perceive things separately from what’s come before. Rather, we experience everything through the filter, against the background, and within the structure of our own personal vision of the world.3

我觉得这很有趣,而且当我们试图设计出让玩家能够以丰富和令人满意的方式参与的游戏时,这很有帮助。它提醒我们,作为玩家,我们为游戏带来了很多个人、文化甚至政治方面的东西。

I find this fascinating, and it can be helpful when we’re trying to figure out how to design games that players can engage with in rich and satisfying ways. It reminds us that as players, we bring a lot to the games we play that is personal, cultural, and even political.

每款游戏在设计控制时都会有特定的考虑。专注于创建玩家可以轻松发现和使用的控件,以及玩家的操作会立即通过游戏中的某些反应得到确认的控件。考虑游戏的感觉和趣味性,这些概念你可能已经知道,我将在第 22 章中简要介绍。考虑其他游戏使用的控件约定游戏:如果您愿意,它们可能会帮助玩家更轻松地掌握您的游戏。请考虑为残障玩家提供便利。

Each individual game will have specific considerations for the design of its controls. Focus on creating controls that players can discover and use easily, and where player actions are acknowledged immediately by some reaction in the game. Think about game feel and juiciness, concepts that you may already know about, and that I’ll briefly describe in chapter 22. Think about the control conventions used by other games: they might help players pick up your game more easily, if that’s what you want. Consider accessibility for players with a disability.

通过在进行垂直切片时迭代游戏控件的设计,您可以确保您的游戏易于使用、好玩且以有趣的方式具有挑战性 - 或者说它富有表现力、有意义且有趣。

By iterating on the design of your game’s controls as you make a vertical slice, you can ensure that your game is easy to use, fun to play, and challenging in an interesting way—or that it’s expressive, meaningful, and intriguing.

所以,这三个元素是:角色摄像机控制。我们必须在预制作期间很好地掌握游戏的这些元素,方法是创建一个垂直切片,其中包含一个或多个经过精雕细琢的玩家角色、他们的核心能力以及游戏的核心机制。

So, the three Cs: character, camera, and control. We must get a good handle on these elements of our game during preproduction by creating a vertical slice with a polished player-character or -characters, their core abilities, and the core mechanics of the game.

样本级别和 Blockmesh 设计过程

Sample Levels and the Blockmesh Design Process

垂直切片还将包括游戏中的一个或多个示例级别(环境),以便我们有一个可以玩的地方并可以了解完成的游戏的外观和声音。

The vertical slice will also include one or more sample levels (environments) from the game, so that we have a place to play in and can get a sense of what the finished game will look and sound like.

大多数游戏关卡设计都是从纸上或白板上开始的。在顽皮狗,我们首先会讨论关卡中的游戏玩法和故事情节,以及关卡需要完成的任务。然后,我们会将我们设想的关卡游戏玩法顺序勾勒成粗略的流程图,如图10.3所示。

Most level design for games starts with work on paper or a whiteboard. At Naughty Dog, we would start by discussing our ideas for the gameplay and story beats in the level, and what the level needed to accomplish. Then, we would sketch out the sequence of gameplay we were imagining for the level as a rough flowchart, as shown in figure 10.3.

图 10.3

Figure 10.3

白板流程图勾勒出《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》开头的游戏玩法和故事情节。图片来源:UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™ © 2009 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC。UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves 是 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC 的商标。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创作和开发。

A whiteboard flowchart sketching out the gameplay and story sequence at the beginning of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Image credit: UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™ © 2009 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

使用此流程图,我们将为该级别制作一些松散的图表,包括平面图(自上而下)和立面图(侧视图)(如果需要),如图10.4所示。

Using this flowchart, we would make some loose diagrams for the level, in plan view (top-down) and also in elevation (side view) if necessary, as shown in figure 10.4.

图 10.4

Figure 10.4

白板图展示了我们从流程图到《神秘海域 2:盗贼之王》开头的粗略关卡布局的转变过程,包括平面图和立面图。图片来源:©2009 SIE LLC/《神秘海域 2:盗贼之王》™。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创建和开发。

Whiteboard diagrams showing the way that we moved from flowchart to rough level layout for the beginning of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, in plan view and elevation. Image credit: ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

在我早期的项目中,我们会花很多时间为关卡制定详细的架构规划,无论是在纸上还是在 Adob​​e Illustrator 中。随着顽皮狗的关卡设计流程日趋成熟,我们开始减少在详细纸质布局上所花的时间,并迅速从松散的白板草图转向块状网格关卡布局流程。

On my earlier projects we would spend many hours making detailed architectural plans for our levels, on paper or in Adobe Illustrator. As our level design process matured at Naughty Dog, we began to spend less time on detailed paper layout and would move quickly from our loose whiteboard sketches to a blockmesh level layout process.

Blockmesh,也称为 blockout、白盒或灰盒关卡设计,是一种低分辨率的三维几何体,通常有两种类型:可见的可渲染(可见)几何体和用于碰撞的不可见几何体。使用这两种几何体,设计师可以快速轻松地以最基本的形式绘制关卡。最好是设计师在此阶段与艺术家、程序员、动画师、音频设计师以及将参与关卡设计的任何其他人员进行协作。

Blockmesh, also known as blockout, whitebox, or graybox level design, is low-resolution three-dimensional geometry, usually of two types: renderable (visible) geometry that can be seen, and invisible geometry used for collision. Using these two types of geometry, designers can quickly and easily sketch in a level in its most basic form. It’s best when the designer can collaborate at this stage with the artists, programmers, animators, audio designers, and anyone else who will contribute to the level’s design.

随着时间的推移,块状网格将通过连续的迭代来完善,以改进关卡的设计。在某个时候,艺术家将开始开发关卡的视觉外观,首先通过粗略的绘制开始为关卡提供定义,然后通过连续的迭代完成艺术,如图10.5所示。设计师、艺术家和其他所有人都将继续合作,每个人都贡献自己的技能来改进关卡,直到完成。

Over time, the blockmesh will be refined with successive iterative passes to improve the level’s design. At some point artists will begin to develop the level’s visual look, first with rough draw-overs to begin to lend definition to the level, and then with successive passes of finished art, as shown in figure 10.5. Designers, artists, and everyone else will continue to collaborate, each lending their skills to improve the level until it is complete.

图 10.5

Figure 10.5

关卡设计和艺术创作的 blockmesh(又称 blockout、whitebox 或 graybox)过程。图片来源:Erick Pangilinan 和 ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创建和开发。

The blockmesh (aka blockout, whitebox, or graybox) process of level design and art creation. Images credit: Erick Pangilinan and ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

Blockmesh 有时会使用颜色编码来显示重要元素,例如可攀爬的边缘或水。如果你对这个过程感兴趣,一定要看看鼓舞人心的#blocktober Twitter 标签(图 10.6)由顽皮狗游戏设计师 Michael Barclay 于 2017 年发起,以纪念 blockmesh,因为用 Michael 的话来说,“关卡封锁就是艺术” 。4

Blockmesh is sometimes color-coded to show important elements like climbable edges or water. If you’re interested in this process, be sure to look at the inspirational #blocktober Twitter hashtag (figure 10.6) that was started by Naughty Dog game designer Michael Barclay in 2017 to honor blockmesh, because, in Michael’s words, “level blockouts are art.”4

图 10.6

Figure 10.6

迈克尔·巴克莱 (Michael Barclay) 的 Twitter 帖子,启动了#blocktober 标签。

Michael Barclay’s Twitter post, which started the #blocktober hashtag.

对于 2D 游戏,有一个与 3D 块网格关卡设计类似的过程,即我们使用简单的图元在引擎的关卡编辑器中绘制关卡。具体如何完成取决于游戏风格和引擎,但基本原则是相同的:快速粗略地绘制一些可玩的东西,并通过迭代进行改进。

There’s an analogous process to 3D blockmesh level design for 2D games, where we sketch in the level in the engine’s level editor using simple primitives. Exactly how that would be done depends on the game style and engine, but the basic principle is the same: quickly rough in something playable and refine it through iteration.

使用块网格设计流程构建样本关卡是许多游戏创建垂直切片的重要部分,尽管其他关卡设计方法(例如使用程序关卡生成)也可能适用。

Building sample levels using a blockmesh design process is an important part of the creation of a vertical slice for many games, although other level design methods—for example, using procedural level generation—might also be appropriate.

除了关卡设计中的这些简单指针之外,我还推荐这些资源:

In addition to these simple pointers in level design, I recommend these resources:

  • 如果您在 GDC Vault (gdcvault.com) 上搜索“关卡设计研讨会”,您可以找到许多关于关卡设计的精彩演讲,这些演讲最初是在 GDC 关卡设计研讨会上进行的。
  • You can find many good talks about level design that were originally given at the GDC Level Design Workshop if you search for “level design workshop” on the GDC Vault (gdcvault.com).
  • Christopher W. Totten 的书《关卡设计的建筑方法》对该主题进行了高质量和全面的介绍。
  • Christopher W. Totten’s book An Architectural Approach to Level Design has high-quality and comprehensive coverage of the subject.
  • 升级!斯科特·罗杰斯 (Scott Rogers) 撰写的《优秀视频游戏设计指南》有很多关于关卡设计的精彩片段。
  • Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design by Scott Rogers has many great sequences about level design.
  • 马修·弗雷德里克 (Matthew Frederick) 所著的《我在建筑学校学到的 101 件事》包含了许多针对建筑师的智慧,但对于关卡设计师来说也很有价值。
  • 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick contains a lot of wisdom aimed at architects but valuable to level designers.
  • 顽皮狗首席游戏设计师 Emilia Schatz 的文章定义视频游戏的环境语言”是必读之作。5 Emilia是一位非常有洞察力的游戏设计师,她的精彩文章将关卡设计思维与更通用的游戏设计理念融合在一起。
  • The article Defining Environment Language for Video Games” by Naughty Dog lead game designer Emilia Schatz is a must-read.5 Emilia is an extraordinarily insightful game designer, and her superb article integrates level design thinking with more general game design philosophy.

垂直切片样本级别的大小和质量

The Size and Quality of Vertical Slice Sample Levels

垂直切片中样本关卡的大小最终将由游戏设计师决定,尽管游戏的利益相关者(例如制作人或投资者)可能会要求关卡达到一定大小。样本关卡应该足够长,以便我们可以玩一段时间,以了解最终游戏的玩法。

The sizes of the sample levels in a vertical slice will ultimately be up to the designers of the game, although the stakeholders in the game (such as its producers or financiers) will probably ask for levels of a certain size. The sample levels should be long enough that we can play for a while, to get a sense of how the finished game will play.

在商业游戏团队中,我们希望样本关卡中的所有内容都像最终游戏中的艺术、动画、设计、代码、声音和音乐一样完整和精致,这样我们的垂直切片才真正可以交付。6然而对于许多规模较小的团队,包括学生团队,在前期制作结束时,通常无法设计和“完成”哪怕一个关卡。这就是美丽角落的概念的由来。

On a commercial game team, we’d expect to make everything in our sample levels as complete and as polished as their art, animation, design, code, sound, and music would be in the finished game, so that our vertical slice is truly shippable.6 However, for many smaller teams, including student teams, it’s often not possible to design and “art up” even a single level by the end of preproduction. This is where the concept of the beautiful corner comes in.

美丽的角落

The Beautiful Corner

简单来说,美丽的角落是关卡的一部分,足以填满玩家电脑上的一个屏幕,其中的艺术和音频经过打磨,看起来和听起来都和成品游戏一样好。这是游戏中被打磨得美丽的一小角(或者,如果你的游戏不符合传统的美感概念,那么这个小角就是经过加工、精炼或精心制作的)。

Simply put, a beautiful corner is a part of a level, enough to fill a single screen on the player’s computer, where the art and audio have been polished to look and sound as good as they will in the finished game. It’s a little corner of the game which has been made beautiful (or if your game doesn’t conform to traditional notions of beauty, which has been worked, refined, or crafted).

在 3D 游戏中,我们可能会将摄像机对准空间的一角,那里有两面或多面墙与地板和天花板相交。摄像机的“视锥体”是从摄像机的视角可见的楔形空间体积,其视野、长宽比和深度剔除设置均已确定。我们在摄像机视锥体内看到的漂亮角落的一切都应该看起来很棒。这不仅包括背景,还包括存在的物体。我们应该为成品游戏中移动的任何物体制作精美的动画,那里的一切都应该听起来很棒。在游戏设计过程的任何阶段都不要忽视声音设计。

In a 3D game, we might point the camera into the corner of a space, where two or more walls intersect with the floor and ceiling. The camera’s “view frustum” is the wedge-shaped volume of space that is visible from the point of the view of the camera, given its field of view, aspect ratio, and depth-culling settings. Everything that we see of the beautiful corner inside the camera frustum should look great. That includes not just the background but the objects that are present too. We should beautifully animate anything that will be moving in the finished game, and everything there should sound great. Never overlook sound design at any stage of the game design process.

如果我们将相机从美丽的角落移开几度,我们可以看到构成关卡其余部分的低细节块网格。但是通过将相机对准我们美丽的角落,我们可以生动地看到完成的游戏会是什么样子。我在图 10.7中为您绘制了一个例子。

If we turned the camera a few degrees away from the beautiful corner, we could see the low-detail blockmesh that makes up the rest of the level. But by pointing the camera into our beautiful corner, we can vividly visualize what the finished game will be like. I’ve drawn an example for you in figure 10.7.

图 10.7

Figure 10.7

一个美丽的角落,可以让您直观地看到完成的游戏关卡是什么样子。

A beautiful corner for visualizing how a completed game level will look.

我们还可以在 2D 游戏的设计中使用“美丽角落”的概念,无论是横向卷轴、自上而下还是等距游戏。同样,我们应该能够将玩家角色和摄像机定位在一个屏幕上的所有内容看起来和听起来都很棒的位置。“美丽角落”的概念甚至可以应用于非数字游戏和游戏的组成部分。您可以完善棋盘游戏或纸牌游戏的一部分,或“alt-controller”游戏的一部分,使其具有新颖或创新的控制界面。

We can also use the concept of a beautiful corner in the design of a 2D game, whether it’s a side-scrolling, top-down, or isometric game. Again, we should be able to position the player-character and camera in a place where everything on the screen looks and sounds great. The concept of a beautiful corner can even be applied to nondigital games and parts of games. You could polish a part of a board game or card game, or a part of an “alt-controller” game with a novel or innovative control interface.

我在游戏行业中某个地方学到了美丽角落这个概念,但我一直没能发现是谁发明的。(这个术语在历史上被用来描述家庭祭坛。)7这个概念在构建垂直切片时非常有用。如果我们使用美丽角落,即使我们垂直切片中的大部分关卡是块状网格且不可交付,也没关系:我们仍然可以使用垂直切片来理解我们的核心机制。美丽的角落将展示我们的游戏关卡在完成并完成最终的视觉艺术、动画和音频资产后的外观和声音效果。

I picked up this concept of the beautiful corner somewhere in the game industry, but I haven’t been able to discover who coined it. (The term has historically been used to describe a home altar.)7 The concept serves small teams and students incredibly well when building a vertical slice. If we use a beautiful corner, it doesn’t matter if big parts of the levels in our vertical slice are blockmesh and not shippable: we can still use the vertical slice to come to an understanding of our core mechanics in action. The beautiful corner will show how our game’s levels will look and sound when they are complete and finished with final visual art, animation, and audio assets.

正如我们稍后将看到的,为使垂直切片达到可交付的质量水平,我们必须进行的工作,无论是通过创建漂亮的角落还是整个可交付的样品级别,都将以多种不同的方式帮助我们的流程。

As we’ll see later, the work that we have to do to bring a vertical slice to a shippable level of quality, whether by creating a beautiful corner or whole shippable sample levels, will help our process in a number of different ways.

垂直切片的挑战和回报

The Challenge and Reward of the Vertical Slice

构建垂直切片可能是一项艰巨的任务。事实上,这项任务如此艰巨,以至于许多人怀疑是否有可能为大型当代商业视频游戏构建真正的垂直切片。我们可以视为“核心”的游戏元素数量之多,以及创建和完善资产以达到我们当今游戏中的高制作价值标准所需的大量时间,使得垂直切片的挑战一年比一年艰巨。

Building a vertical slice can be a daunting task. So daunting, in fact, that many people doubt whether it’s even possible to build a true vertical slice for a large contemporary commercial videogame. The sheer number of game elements that we could consider “core,” and the huge amount of time it takes to create and polish assets to the standard of the high production values we see in games today, makes the challenge of the vertical slice ever more daunting year by year.

事实上,由于我们在第一款《神秘海域》游戏中遇到的各种制作挫折,我们无法制作真正的垂直切片,而是制作了一部概念电影,将技术演示、关键艺术、动画和粗略的可玩级别剪辑在一起,这有助于我们以与完全可玩的垂直切片相同的方式展示我们游戏的设计。

Indeed, because of various production setbacks that we’d encountered on the first Uncharted game, we weren’t able to make a true vertical slice and instead made a concept movie, cut together from tech demos, key art, animatics, and a rough playable level, which helped us illustrate the design of our game in the same way that a fully playable vertical slice does.

如果我们在垂直切片的思考上保持灵活性——使用漂亮的角落、补充概念电影和其他演示材料来形象化我们游戏的经验——那么垂直切片就成为一个可实现的目标,并且为我们制作游戏的其余部分做好了巨大的准备。

If we stay flexible in our thinking about the vertical slice—using beautiful corners, supplementary concept movies, and other presentation materials to visualize the experience of our game—then the vertical slice becomes a realizable goal and does a huge amount to prepare us to make the rest of our game.

制作垂直切片是我们在致力于游戏设计时必须采取的下一步措施。正如我们之前所讨论的,坚持想法很难。总是感觉承诺为时过早,我们总是对自己的决定犹豫不决。但我们在预制作期间做出的设计承诺使我们的游戏在整个项目过程中保持正轨,我们必须学会有勇气做出这些承诺。

Making the vertical slice is when we have to take our next steps in committing to the design of our game. As we’ve previously discussed, committing to ideas is hard. It always feels too early to commit, and we’re always second-guessing our decisions. But the design commitments we make during preproduction allow our game to stay on track throughout the rest of the project, and we must learn to have the courage to make them.

边制作边设计是我所知道的设计和开发游戏的最佳方式,创造垂直切片的满足感可以向我们自己和其他人展示我们正在做某件事,这对我们团队的士气大有裨益。在下一章中,我们将详细介绍如何构建这个出色的东西。

Designing-by-making is the best way that I know of to design and develop a game, and the satisfaction of creating a vertical slice, to show ourselves and everyone else that we’re on to something, pays dividends in terms of our team’s morale. In the next chapter, we’ll look in detail at how we should go about building this excellent thing.

  1. 1. Ludwig Kietzmann,《半分钟光环:对 Jaime Griesemer 的采访》,Engadget,2011 年 7 月 14 日,https://www.engadget.com/2011/07/14/half-minute-halo-an-interview-with-jaime-griesemer/

  2. 1.  Ludwig Kietzmann, “Half-Minute Halo: An Interview with Jaime Griesemer,” Engadget, July 14, 2011, https://www.engadget.com/2011/07/14/half-minute-halo-an-interview-with-jaime-griesemer/.

  3. 2.Itay Keren,“向后滚动:横向卷轴游戏中摄像机的理论与实践”,Gamasutra,2015 年 5 月 11 日,https: //gamasutra.com/blogs/ItayKeren/20150511/243083/Scroll_Back_The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Cameras_in_SideScrollers.php 。

  4. 2.  Itay Keren, “Scroll Back: The Theory and Practice of Cameras in Side-Scrollers,” Gamasutra, May 11, 2015, https://gamasutra.com/blogs/ItayKeren/20150511/243083/Scroll_Back_The_Theory_and_Practice_of_Cameras_in_SideScrollers.php.

  5. 3 . Swink,游戏感觉,50。

  6. 3.  Swink, Game Feel, 50.

  7. 4. Michael Barclay(@MotleyGrue),“关卡设计师们怎么样了”,Twitter,2017 年 10 月 1 日,https://twitter.com/MotleyGrue/status/914571356888371201

  8. 4.  Michael Barclay (@MotleyGrue), “What’s Up Level Designers,” Twitter, October 1, 2017, https://twitter.com/MotleyGrue/status/914571356888371201.

  9. 5. Emilia Schatz,“定义视频游戏的环境语言”,80 Level,2017 年 6 月 27 日,https://80.lv/articles/defining-environment-language-for-video-games/

  10. 5.  Emilia Schatz, “Defining Environment Language for Video Games,” 80 Level, June 27, 2017, https://80.lv/articles/defining-environment-language-for-video-games/.

  11. 6.游戏开发者和其他类型的创意人员经常谈论“发行”和“可发行”。发行意味着发布或出版一款游戏,以便公众可以享用,而可发行意味着某样东西已经好到可以发行了。这些词来自软件被放到物理媒体上并装进盒子里运送到遥远地方的时代。当有人认为他们正在开发的东西终于足够好了,他们可能会兴高采烈地大喊:“发行吧!”

  12. 6.  Game developers and other types of creative people often talk about “shipping” and “shippable.” Shipping means releasing or publishing a game so that it’s available to the public, and shippable means that something is good enough to be released. These words come from a time when software was put onto physical media and placed in boxes to be shipped to distant places. When someone thinks that something they’re working on is finally good enough, they might exultantly cry, “Ship it!”

  13. 7. “图标角”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_corner

  14. 7.  “Icon Corner,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icon_corner.

 

 

11 构建垂直切片

11    Building a Vertical Slice

好的,我们决定构建一个垂直切片。我们该如何构建它?到目前为止,我在这本书中已经多次谈到“迭代”,因此,如果您知道我们将使用迭代设计流程来制作垂直切片,您不会感到惊讶。

Okay, so we’ve decided to build a vertical slice. How do we go about building it? I’ve talked about “iterating” a lot so far in this book, so it won’t surprise you to learn that we will use an iterative design process to make our vertical slice.

缺乏经验的游戏开发者可能会认为我们构建的游戏是这样的:

Inexperienced game developers may think we build a game like this:

在装配线上,就像我们在第 9 章中讨论过的老式“瀑布”技术一样。他们不明白,为了让我们的游戏变得出色,我们需要一次又一次地构建和修改它——这就是他们没有时间的原因。

on an assembly line, like the old-fashioned “waterfall” technique we discussed in chapter 9. They don’t understand that, in order to make our game great, we need to build and revise it over and again—and that’s why they run out of time.

游戏实际上是这样构建的:

This is how a game actually gets built:

迭代游戏设计发生在我们根据原始想法提出设计、基于该想法开发(创造)可玩的东西、对所构建的内容进行游戏测试、分析游戏测试的结果、修改设计、构建新内容时 - 迭代循环持续进行,直到我们最终完成游戏制作。

Iterative game design happens when we come up with a design based on our original ideas, develop (create) something playable based on that idea, playtest what we built, analyze the results of the playtest, revise the design, build something new—and so the iterative cycle continues, until we eventually finish making our game.

迭代设计是循环进行的。但是,我们如何才能阻止自己一直兜圈子呢?这就是我们的项目目标发挥作用的地方。在分析阶段,如果我们看到我们的游戏满足了我们设定的体验目标,那么我们就知道我们正朝着正确的方向前进。如果没有,我们的下一个设计工作应该可以帮助我们回到正轨。这样,我们就不会漫无目的地尝试不同的东西,而是朝着目标前进。

Iterative design takes place in a loop. But how do we stop ourselves just going around in circles? That’s where our project goals come in. When, at the analysis stage, we can see that our game is meeting the experience goal we set, then we know we are heading in the right direction. If we’re not, our next piece of design work should help get us back on track. In this way, we’re prevented from spiraling around aimlessly trying different things and are guided toward a goal.

从原型开始工作

Work from a Prototype

在 2002 年 DICE 大会上对方法的讨论中,马克·塞尼 (Mark Cerny) 描述了“可发布的第一个可玩版本”,这是他后来称之为垂直切片的术语。马克说,我们应该从构思的起点开始:从原型开始。

In his D.I.C.E. 2002 discussion of Method, Mark Cerny describes the “publishable first playable,” his term for what would come to be known as a vertical slice. Mark says that we should start where we started in ideation: with prototypes.

我不必告诉你从制作原型中你学到了多少东西。具体来说,团队正在制作大量连续的原型。重要的是不要等待,然后才开始制作这些原型。利用你拥有的零件,无论多么粗糙,尽你所能地打造最好的产品。因为原型是你学习的地方。…… [这些]原型最终与游戏关卡没有区别。……每个原型都汇集了艺术作品、游戏机制和技术,以展示游戏的整个关卡。1

I don’t have to tell you how much you learn from making prototypes. Specifically, the team is making lots of successive prototypes. It’s important not to wait before you start making these prototypes. Take the pieces that you have, however sketchy, and build the best you can. Because prototypes are where you learn. [These] prototypes eventually become indistinguishable from game levels. Each prototype brings together artwork, game mechanics and technology to show an entire level of a game that could be.1

因此,我们可以开始进行垂直切片,采用我们在构思过程中制作的原型,通过项目目标的新视角来审视它们,并继续迭代。我们可以采用最强大的单个原型,也可以将两个或多个原型结合起来制作新的东西。

So, we can begin making a vertical slice by taking the prototypes we made during ideation, looking at them through the new lens of our project goals, and continuing to iterate. We can go with the strongest single prototype or combine two or more of them to make something new.

也许我们会重新开始一个比我们以前的任何原型都更能实现我们项目目标的新原型,但正如我在第 5 章中提到的那样,这可能是不明智的。这是你的选择:我相信你会为你的项目做出最好的决定。

Maybe we’ll start over with a new prototype that serves our project goals better than any of our previous prototypes, but as I mentioned in chapter 5, that can be unwise. It’s your choice: I trust you to make the best decision for your project.

创建游戏的早期序列——但不要从头开始

Create an Early Sequence from the Game—but Don’t Make the Very Beginning Yet

当你从原型开始构建代表游戏核心的垂直切片时,你可能会发现自己正在创建成品游戏的早期序列。游戏的基本内容通常在游戏开始时就清楚地显示出来,所以这是一个自然的发展。

As you work from your prototypes to build a vertical slice that represents the core of your game, you’ll probably find yourself creating an early sequence of your finished game. The basics of a game are usually shown clearly toward the start of the game, so this is a natural development.

但是,不要将游戏的开头设计垂直切片中。允许自己在游戏中向前跳一点,假设玩家到达那里时已经学会了游戏及其故事的基本知识。这将帮助您更有效地、更轻松地掌握游戏的核心。您可以随时使用控制备忘单来让游戏测试员进入您的游戏,就像我们将在第 12 章中讨论的那样。

However, don’t design the very beginning of your game into your vertical slice. Give yourself permission to jump a little way forward into the game, assuming that the player will have learned the very basics of the game and its narrative by the time they get there. This will help you come to grips with the core of your game more effectively and with less difficulty. You can always use a controls cheat sheet to get your playtesters into your game, like the one we’ll discuss in chapter 12.

您可以在第 22 章“游戏应按照什么顺序构建?”中阅读有关这种想法背后的哲学的更多信息。

You can read more about the philosophy behind this thinking, under “What Order Should a Game Be Built In?” in chapter 22.

迭代游戏的核心元素

Iterate on the Core Elements of Your Game

正如我们在制作原型时所做的那样,我们应该开始构建垂直切片,重点关注构成我们正在设想游戏的核心。如果我们在制作原型时对开发方法有点马虎,那么现在是时候在继续前进之前把一切都收紧了。

Just as we did while we were prototyping, we should start building our vertical slice by focusing on the small set of game mechanics, verbs, and player activities that form the core of our game as we’re imagining it. If we had a slightly sloppy approach to development while we were prototyping, now it’s time to tighten everything up before we move forward.

确保游戏性、图像、音频、控制、界面和可用性方面的一切都很可靠。这个垂直部分应该很有趣、易于学习且没有错误。在进行过程中解决问题。我们将在第 13 章中进一步讨论这个问题。

Make everything solid in terms of gameplay, graphics, audio, control, interface, and usability. This vertical slice should be fun to play with, easy to learn, and bug-free. Polish out the problems as you go along. We’ll talk about this more in chapter 13.

请注意 Mark Cerny 在上面引用的这句话中强调了连续原型。这意味着构建然后丢弃最终会变成我们的垂直切片的东西,可能要连续几次。在他的演讲中,Mark 说我们可能会丢弃大约四个不同版本的垂直切片,然后才能最终对它感到满意。他最近告诉我,“正是第五个垂直切片成功地展示了顽皮狗试图实现的目标(通过Crash Bandicoot);一旦掌握了这一点,我们就会投入生产。感谢 Andy [Gavin] 和 Jason [Rubin] 的耐心,他们以每次迭代五六周的速度进行了多次迭代。”

Notice Mark Cerny’s emphasis on successive prototypes in the quote above. This means building and then discarding the thing that will eventually turn into our vertical slice, maybe several times in a row. In his talk, Mark says that we’ll probably throw away about four different versions of our vertical slice before we’re eventually happy with it. He recently told me, “It was the fifth vertical slice that successfully demonstrated what Naughty Dog was trying to achieve [with Crash Bandicoot]; once this was in hand we headed into production. Kudos to Andy [Gavin] and Jason [Rubin] for the patience to iterate so many times at five or six weeks per iteration.”

如果我们只有几周的时间进行预生产,我们可能没有时间对垂直切片进行五次完整的迭代——但我们可能会至少重新开始一次。我曾经参与制作的每一款游戏中的大多数关卡在开发过程中至少被废弃并重新开始过一次,这就是游戏开发的本质。重新开始的原因有很多:设计和技术发现、团队领导的笔记以及游戏测试反馈。

If we only have a few weeks for preproduction, we probably won’t have time for five full iterations on our vertical slice—but we will probably start over at least once. Most of the levels in every game I’ve ever worked on got junked and restarted at least once during their development, and that’s just the nature of game development. There are many reasons to start over: design and technology discoveries, notes from a team leader, and playtest feedback.

尽早并经常保存您的工作以避免丢失工作是一种很好的游戏开发惯例。使用递增的版本号进行连续保存,以便您可以在需要时回溯。如果您已经在使用版本控制系统(用于管理对计算机文件所做更改的工具),请经常提交。您还可以保存到在线存储服务,以便在需要时返回到较早的版本。如果您确实丢失了工作并不得不重新开始,请不要担心。第二次构建丢失的东西将花费更少的时间。

It’s good general game development practice to save your work “early and often,” to avoid losing work. Make successive saves with incrementing version numbers so that you can backtrack if you need to. If you’re already using a version control system (a tool used to manage the changes made to computer files), make frequent commits. You could also save to an online storage service that lets you go back to an earlier version if needed. If you do ever lose work and have to start over, don’t sweat it. It will take you much less time to build the thing you lost the second time around.

在我们进行垂直切片工作的过程中,事实上,在整个开发过程中,我们都应该不断地测试我们的游戏。我们将在下一章中详细讨论这一点。

Throughout our work on the vertical slice—and indeed, throughout our entire development process—we should constantly be playtesting our game. We’ll look at this in detail in the next chapter.

致力于游戏引擎和硬件平台

Commit to a Game Engine and Hardware Platform

在预制作的某个阶段(越早越好),你应该对制作游戏所用的游戏引擎以及游戏将在哪种操作系统和硬件平台上运行做出明确的决定。在预制作的早期阶段,你可能使用手头上现有的任何游戏引擎来构建垂直切片。然而,你对游戏引擎和平台的决定将影响与游戏创作有关的许多事情,从你使用的工具到你考虑的受众,所以你不应该拖延决定。

At some point during preproduction—the earlier the better—you should make a firm decision about the game engine you will be using to make your game, and what operating system and hardware platform it will run on. It could be that, very early in preproduction, you are building your vertical slice using whatever game engine you have to hand. However, your decisions about game engine and platform will impact many things to do with the creation of your game, from the tools that you use to the audience you’re considering, and so you should not delay in deciding.

如果你选择的游戏机等硬件平台需要你通过认证流程才能发布游戏,那么你应该立即开始熟悉认证要求。您将在第 34 章中阅读更多相关内容。

If you choose a hardware platform like a game console that will require you to pass a certification process before you can release your game, you should immediately begin to familiarize yourself with the requirements for certification. You will read more about this in chapter 34.

践行良好家务管理

Practice Good Housekeeping

“内务管理”是一个古怪的术语,软件开发人员用它来描述一套保持代码库和项目文件夹整洁、有序和维护良好的做法。我们这样做是为了让我们以后的项目规模和复杂性不断增长,从而让自己的工作更加轻松。

“Housekeeping” is the quaint term that software developers use to describe a set of practices around keeping our code base and our project folder tidy, organized, and well-maintained. We do this to make things easier for ourselves later on, as our project grows in size and complexity.

良好的项目文件夹管理可以做到以下几点:

It is good project folder housekeeping to:

  • 将您的文件组织到具有层次结构的文件夹中,将类似的文件存放在一起,以便您可以更轻松地找到文件。
  • Organize your files into a hierarchy of folders, storing like with like, so that you can find things more easily.
  • 当文件夹中包含太多项目导致文件列表难以快速读取(通常为十个左右)时,请使用子文件夹。
  • Use subfolders when a folder fills up with enough items that the list of files becomes hard to read through quickly (usually ten or so).

您可以在本书的网站 playfulproductionprocess.com 上找到一个简单的项目文件夹层次结构,可用作管理起点。

You can find a simple project folder hierarchy to use as a housekeeping starting point on this book’s website, playfulproductionprocess.com.

良好的代码管理应做到以下几点:

It is good code housekeeping to:

  • 以一种方式构造和注释您的代码,以便当您有一段时间没有查看它或当其他人需要处理它时,可以轻松阅读和理解。
  • Structure and comment your code in a way that makes it easy to read and understand when you haven’t looked at it for some time, or when others need to work on it.
  • 选择描述性的变量名,但不要太长。
  • Choose variable names that are descriptive, but not too long.
  • 使用“camelCase”使变量名更具可读性。
  • Use “camelCase” to make variable names more readable.
  • 遵循命名约定(由团队确定)来提供有关变量的额外信息。例如,使用 _leadingUnderscore 来表示范围内的局部变量。
  • Follow naming conventions (determined by the team) to give extra information about variables. For example, use a _leadingUnderscore to denote variables that are local in scope.

其他良好的管理实践包括:

Other good housekeeping practices include:

  • 在必要时记录您的工作,使用文件和列表来记录任何可能缺失的重要信息。
  • Document your work where necessary, with documents and lists that capture any important information that would be missing otherwise.
  • 使用版本控制系统创建代码和资产的在线存储库,可以在团队成员之间共享,并在需要时回滚到以前的版本。
  • Use a version control system to create an online repository of code and assets that can be shared among team members and used to roll back to a previous version if you ever need to.

每个团队都有一套自己的最佳管理实践,这些实践基于过去的经验,并随着时间的推移不断完善。如果您在构思时尚未采用良好的管理实践,那么您必须在预生产期间开始采用,以便为您的游戏奠定稳定的基础并加快您的进程。

Every team has its own set of best housekeeping practices, based on past experience and refined over time. If you weren’t already using good housekeeping practices during ideation, then you must start during preproduction, in order to lay a stable foundation for your game and to speed up your process.

顺便说一句,您不再是在开发游戏的原型或测试版本。永远不要将资产、文件夹或脚本称为“tempSomething”。我已经记不清见过多少个项目,其中发行游戏中的玩家角色对象被称为“playerTest”。进入游戏的实体往往会保留下来并不断发展。重命名事物通常很麻烦,这样做甚至可能会破坏游戏。您的垂直切片现在是您的真正项目,因此请相应地选择名称。

By the way, you aren’t working on a prototype or test version of your game anymore. Don’t ever call an asset, folder, or script “tempSomething.” I’ve lost count of how many projects I’ve seen where the player-character object in the shipping game is called “playerTest.” Entities that go into a game have a tendency to stick around and evolve. It’s usually a hassle to rename things and doing so might even break the game. Your vertical slice is now your real project, so choose names accordingly.

开始添加调试功能

Start to Add Debug Functions

预生产阶段是开始向游戏添加调试功能的好时机,这将有助于您高效地开发游戏。调试功能可能以特殊屏幕菜单、作弊键组合或在提示符下输入的命令的形式出现。它们通常只有游戏开发者才能访问,并允许我们在构建游戏时做一些有用的事情。这些可能包括传送到任何级别,使玩家角色免受伤害,或显示通常对玩家隐藏的游戏元素的数字和基于状态的信息。

Preproduction is a good time to start adding debug functions to your game that will help you develop it efficiently. Debug functions might come in the form of special on-screen menus, cheat key combinations, or commands typed in at a prompt. They are usually only accessible to the game’s developers and allow us to do helpful things as we build the game. These might include teleporting to any level, making the player-character invulnerable to damage, or showing numerical and state-based information about elements of the game that is usually hidden from the player.

许多设计师在游戏中添加的第一个调试功能是重置组合键。在测试垂直切片时,游戏经常会卡在某个状态,或者玩家到达终点后想要重新开始。为了避免关闭并重新启动游戏而浪费宝贵的时间,开发人员可以简单地按下作弊键来重置游戏,使其处于与新启动的游戏版本相同的状态。请确保选择一些玩家不太可能意外按下的模糊组合键或游戏手柄按钮 - 例如,同时按住键盘上的“R”和“ = ”。

The first debug function that many designers add to their game is a reset key combination. Very often, when playtesting a vertical slice, the game will get stuck in some state, or the player will reach the end and want to start over. To avoid having to close and restart the game, wasting valuable time, the developer can simply hit the cheat keys to reset the game, putting it into a state that is identical to a freshly launched version of the game. Make sure that you choose some obscure combination of keys or gamepad buttons that the player is unlikely to hit accidentally—for example, holding “R” and “=” on the keyboard at the same time.

尽早失败、快速失败、经常失败

Fail Early, Fail Fast, Fail Often

失败是迭代过程中不可避免的一部分。我们尝试的很多事情都不会成功。这意味着失败并不坏,我们应该相应地调整心态。如果我们尝试的事情失败了,我们应该振作起来,再试一次。

Failure is an inevitable part of the iterative process. A lot of what we’ll try isn’t going to work out. That means that failure isn’t bad, and we should adjust our mindset accordingly. If something we try fails, we should pick ourselves up and have another go.

您可能听说过“早失败、快失败、常失败”这句话,它来自快速原型设计领域,这是一组迭代工业设计技术。这个信条鼓励我们在流程的早期开始构建事物,并尝试尽快了解我们正在构建的东西的“交易破坏者”问题是什么。这将使我们有更多时间尽可能多地尝试构建没有任何重大问题的东西。

You may have heard the saying “Fail early, fail fast, fail often,” which comes from the world of rapid prototyping, a group of iterative industrial design techniques. This credo encourages us to start building things early in our process and to try to understand as soon as we can what the “deal breaker” problems are with what we’re building. That will leave us more time to have as many different attempts as possible at building something that doesn’t have any major problems.

这非常符合本书的设计迭代和持续游戏测试的理念。请记住,在测试您所构建的内容之前,尽量不要工作超过一两个小时。

This fits in well with this book’s philosophy of design iteration and constant playtesting. Remember, try not to work for more than an hour or two before playtesting what you’ve built on someone.

在同一物理空间或在线协同工作

Work in the Same Physical Space or Together Online

如果您在团队中工作,请尽可能尝试与队友在同一个物理空间中一起工作,或者使用视频会议、音频通话或即时消息在线一起工作。在设计游戏时,同时一起工作可以让一切运行得更顺畅。并不是每个人都能在同一物理空间中工作——许多团队分布在全球各地——但如果经常且有规律地进行实时协同工作,即使是少量的实时协同工作也会对游戏项目的顺利运行产生巨大的积极影响。

If you’re working on a team, try to work together in the same physical space as your teammates whenever possible, or work together online using videoconferencing, audio calls, or instant messaging. There is something about working together at the same time that makes everything run more smoothly when designing games. Not everyone can be in the same physical space—many teams are globally distributed—but even small amounts of real time coworking can make a big positive impact on the smooth running of a game project, if they happen frequently and regularly.

这在一定程度上是出于实际考虑:当我们同时工作并能快速讨论某个问题时,就高度复杂的游戏开发流程进行有效沟通会更加容易和快捷。但这也与情感和团队士气有关。当我们通过电子邮件进行异步交流时,很难判断另一个人表现如何。我们说的话是否让他们感到紧张?我们是否需要微调我们的沟通方式,以便我们的队友知道我们尊重和信任他们?

This is partly practical: it’s easier and faster to communicate effectively about the highly complex game development process when we’re working together at the same time and can quickly chat about an issue. But it’s also related to emotion and team morale. It’s hard to tell how another person is doing when we’re communicating asynchronously through email. Did something we said make them tense up? Do we need to fine-tune the way that we’re communicating, so that our teammate knows we respect and trust them?

如果我们想保持有效的合作,就必须防止小误解和沟通不畅演变成大问题。在同一物理空间或同时在线工作是保持良好团队士气的最佳途径,而良好的团队士气对于创造一款优秀的游戏至关重要。

We have to prevent small misunderstandings and miscommunications from building up into bigger problems if we want to keep collaborating effectively. Working in the same physical space or online at the same time is the best path to the good team morale that is essential in the creation of an excellent game.

保存并分类你的设计材料

Save and Categorize Your Design Materials

每个设计过程都会产生大量的设计材料:文档、图片、电影和原始游戏资产,其中很多都不会在最终的游戏中用到。在开发游戏时,你应该保存和分类你制作的所有内容。

Every design process generates a large volume of design material: documents, images, movies, and original game assets, much of which will go unused in the finished game. As you work on your game, you should save and categorize everything that you make.

在你工作时,这需要你付出一些额外的努力。我们很容易急于向前,把未使用的设计材料丢在身后,随意扔在名字选得不太好的文件夹中。但就像我们在引擎的项目文件夹中进行良好的管理一样,我们也应该对我们的设计材料进行良好的管理。同样,你可以在本书的网站 playfulproductionprocess.com 上找到设计材料的示例文件夹层次结构。

This will take a little extra effort when you’re working. It’s tempting to dash forward and leave our unused design materials scattered behind us, dumped in some random folder with poorly chosen names. But just as we practice good housekeeping in our engine’s project folder, so we should practice good housekeeping with our design materials. Again, you can find an example folder hierarchy for your design materials on this book’s website, playfulproductionprocess.com.

每天或每周结束时,花点时间将设计材料分类到正确的文件夹中,确保文件的名称经过精心挑选,以便您以后搜索某些内容时可以轻松理解。然后,无论何时您需要任何设计材料,无论您是在寻找搁置的游戏设计作品,还是在寻找一些非常适合您的社交媒体活动的未使用的概念艺术,您都可以轻松找到它。

At the end of every day or every week, take a moment to sort your design materials into the correct folders, making sure that the files have well-chosen names that you’ll understand easily later when you’re searching for something. Then, whenever you need any of your design materials, whether you’re looking for a piece of game design that you’d set aside or are searching for some unused concept art that would be perfect for your social media campaign, you’ll be able to find it easily.

以项目目标为指导

Be Guided by Your Project Goals

在开始前期制作时,我们的项目目标还记忆犹新:毕竟,我们才刚刚把它们写下来。但是,随着我们忙于构建垂直切片,我们的项目目标很快就会从我们的记忆中消失。因此,请将它们打印出来并贴在工作空间的墙上,以保持它们在您的记忆中。

At the start of preproduction, our project goals are fresh in our minds: after all, we only just wrote them down. But as we get caught up in building our vertical slice, our project goals can quickly fade from our memories. So print them out and put them up somewhere on the wall in your workspace to keep them fresh in your mind.

在处理垂直切片时,请让您的项目目标(尤其是体验目标)指导和关注您的设计。您添加的每项内容是否支持您想要创建的体验或削弱了体验?提出这个问题有助于提供方向,让我们保持正轨。

As you work on your vertical slice, allow your project goals, your experience goal in particular, to guide and focus your design. Does each thing that you add support the experience that you wanted to create or detract from it? Asking that question can be helpful in providing direction to keep us on track.

何时修改项目目标

When to Modify Your Project Goals

有时,当我们在垂直领域工作时,它可能会引导我们走向新的方向。我们可能会偶然发现一些元素的组合,这些元素与我们的项目目标并不完全一致,但每个人都喜欢。我们团队内部和外部的游戏测试员不想在游戏测试结束时停止游戏,而我们,开发团队,对我们正在做的事情感到兴奋。

Sometimes, as we work on a vertical slice, it might lead us in a new direction. We might serendipitously hit on a combination of elements that doesn’t exactly line up with our project goals but that everyone loves. Our playtesters from inside and outside the team don’t want to stop playing at the end of the playtest, and we, the development team, are excited about what we’re making.

此时,您应该考虑修改项目目标,使其与您所发现的内容保持一致。 Tracy Fullerton 说:“我称之为制定或磨练目标——随着您通过迭代更好地理解目标,您并没有改变它们,而是在磨练它们,直达目标的本质。我认为这实际上是‘实现’目标的一个非常重要的部分——将它们磨练到可以实现的程度。” 2

This is a time when you should consider modifying your project goals to bring them into line with what you’ve discovered. Tracy Fullerton says, “I call this crafting or honing the goals—as you understand them better, through iteration, you are not changing them, so much as honing them down, getting to the essence of your goals. I think it is actually quite an important part of ‘meeting’ your goals—to hone them to the point where they are achievable.”2

当然,这样做有一定的风险——如果你不断改变前进的方向,你可能会陷入原地踏步。仔细思考,不要不断地对项目目标做出许多小的改变,而是要明确你的新方向,并进行改变,使它们与你在设计、实施、游戏测试和分析的迭代周期中产生的游戏保持一致。然后坚持下去。

There’s some risk in this, of course—if you keep changing the direction that you’re moving in, you might end up going around in circles. Think carefully, and rather than constantly making many small changes to your project goals, get clear about your new direction, and change them so that they align with the game that has emerged from your iterative cycle of design, implementation, playtesting, and analysis. Then stick with them.

我们通过构建垂直切片来做什么

What We Are Doing by Building the Vertical Slice

好的,让我们继续看看构建垂直切片会给我们带来什么。通过构建垂直切片,我们可以做四件重要的事情。

Okay, let’s move on to look at what building a vertical slice will get us. By building the vertical slice, we’re doing four important things.

通过建筑进行设计

Designing by Building

在第 9 章中,我谈到了游戏开发的早期阶段以及使用瀑布模型管理游戏项目的尝试。在这个模型下,游戏设计师需要尽可能详细地想象一款游戏,然后编写一份庞大的游戏设计文档,详细地描述想象中的游戏。

In chapter 9, I talked about the early days of game development and attempts to use the waterfall model to manage game projects. Under this model, game designers were asked to imagine a game in as much detail as they could and then write a huge game design document, describing the imagined game in intricate detail.

最终的纸质文档通常有几英寸厚,让团队中的任何人阅读它都极其困难。文档可能经过深思熟虑,但在开始构建游戏的几天内,就会发现设计朝着更好的(以前无法想象的)方向发展,使所有这些辛苦工作变得毫无意义。

The resulting paper document was often several inches thick, and getting anyone on the team to read it was incredibly difficult. The document might have had a lot of thought put into it, but within a few days of starting to build the game discoveries would be made to lead the design in a better (and previously unimagined) direction, making all of that hard work obsolete.

如今,游戏的设计都是迭代式的,即创造一些可玩的东西:首先是构思中的原型,现在是垂直切片。我们进行游戏测试、评估,并做出改进,以增强有效的部分,淡化或删除无效的部分。我们考虑“三个 C”——角色、镜头和控制——然后开始变得我们对每个“C”如何为我们的游戏发挥作用充满信心。随着我们把想法推向世界并让它们散发出光芒,我们的游戏开始逐渐呈现在我们眼前。

Today, games are designed iteratively, by creating something playable: first prototypes in ideation, and now a vertical slice. We playtest, evaluate, and make changes that boost the parts that are working and downplay or remove the parts that aren’t. We think about the “three Cs”—character, camera, and control—and we start to become confident about how each “C” is going to work for our game. Gradually, our game begins to appear before our eyes, as we get our ideas out into the world and shine sunlight on them.

创造一些可以传达想法的东西

Making Something That Communicates Ideas

在整个项目过程中,尤其是在预制作期间,我们能够就游戏的新兴设计进行沟通,这一点非常重要。构建垂直切片有助于我们传达该设计。

It is very important, throughout the course of the project but perhaps particularly during preproduction, that we can communicate about the emerging design of our game. Building a vertical slice helps us to communicate that design.

在我们的游戏开发团队中,我们必须将设计的基本特点传达给每一位参与游戏开发的人,从团队领导到最年轻的新员工。我们必须确保每个人都了解我们正在构建的内容,以便他们能够有效地为项目做出贡献。我们还必须能够将我们正在做的事情传达给团队以外的人。在开发早期,这些人通常是我们项目的利益相关者:我们的直属上司、工作室负责人、为项目提供资金的发行商或我们公司的投资者。

Within our game development team, we have to communicate the essential features of our design to every last person who will work on the game, from the team leads to the most junior new hire. We have to ensure that everyone understands what we’re building, so that they can contribute effectively to the project. We also have to be able to communicate what we are making to people outside of our team. Early in development, this is often the stakeholders in our project: our immediate bosses, our studio heads, the publishers who are bankrolling the project, or the investors in our company.

团队需要对这个项目感到满意,因为他们将投入宝贵的时间,项目的利益相关者需要相信这个项目,这样他们才会支持它。人们可以拿起来玩的垂直切片比任何游戏设计文档都更快、更有效、更真实地传达游戏设计理念,没有什么比一个可玩的早期版本更能让人们对游戏感到兴奋,因为它展示了游戏将会有多么棒。

The team needs to feel good about this project that they’re going to sink their precious time into, and the project’s stakeholders need to believe in the project so that they will back it. A vertical slice that someone can pick up and play communicates game design ideas more quickly, efficiently, and truthfully than any game design document, and nothing gets people more excited about a game than a playable early version that shows how great it’s going to be.

了解我们的工具和技术

Learning about Our Tools and Technology

除了确定游戏设计之外,我们还需要确定游戏将使用的工具和技术。现在我们有了现成的优秀游戏引擎,这比以前容易多了。不过,制定可靠、详细的工具和技术计划的最佳方法是构建一个垂直切片,以便从一开始就了解哪些方法效果良好,哪些方法需要更多努力。也许我们必须购买一些中间件来实现游戏的特殊技术需求。也许我们需要从头开始编写一个特殊工具。

Alongside figuring out our game’s design, we also need to figure out the tools and technology that we will use for our game. This is easier than it used to be now that we have great off-the-shelf game engines. Still, the best way to make solid, detailed plans for tools and technology is to build a vertical slice, in order to see what works well from the start and what will need more effort. Perhaps we’ll have to buy some middleware to achieve a special technological need of our game. Maybe we will need to write a special tool from scratch.

游戏中不需要每一项技术创新都预先确定,但工具和技术的核心应该如此。你越能避免或预见问题,就越好。

Not every last technological innovation that will go into your game needs to be figured out during preproduction, but the core of your tools and technology should be. The more that you can avoid or anticipate problems, the better.

收集有关我们需要多长时间以及团队需要哪些成员的信息

Gathering Information about How Long Things Take Us and Who We’ll Need on the Team

我们的垂直切片有许多元素需要完善。这意味着,在构建它时,我们可以收集有关(a)我们的团队需要多长时间来构建东西以及(b)平均需要经过多少个迭代周期才能达到我们满意的质量水平的具体信息。当我们安排全面生产时,这些信息将非常有价值。跟踪您使用网上提供的众多免费时间跟踪工具之一,您可以了解自己的花费以及花费地点。

Our vertical slice has many elements that will be brought to a good level of polish. That means that, as we build it, we can gather concrete information about (a) how long it takes our team to build things and (b) how many cycles of iteration we have to go through, on average, to get to a level of quality that we’re satisfied with. This information will be very valuable when we’re scheduling full production. Track the time you spend, and where you spend it, using one of the many free time-tracking tools available online.

精确追踪创建垂直切片中每个单独实体所需的时间是不明智的——避免陷入过多的细节。只要开始以一两个小时为一个时间段来追踪你的时间,就能帮助你掌握自己的工作速度。制作游戏需要耐心和毅力;游戏开发中的所有事情所花的时间都比你最初想象的要长得多。难以解决的问题可能会突然出现,即使是在你过去轻松完成的工作中。正如创意总监兼作家 Mel MacCoubrey 在 Max 和 Nick Folkman 的精彩Script Lock播客中指出的那样,在游戏中“消防帽和创意帽是同一顶帽子”。3因此,你有责任对团队的进度速度有一个现实的了解。

It’s not sensible to track exactly how long it takes you to create each individual entity in the vertical slice—avoid getting bogged down in too much detail. Just starting to track your time in chunks of one or two hours each will help you get a handle on how quickly you work. Making games takes patience and perseverance; everything in game development takes much longer than you initially think it’s going to. Hard-to-solve problems can suddenly arise, even in types of work that you’ve done easily in the past. As creative director and writer Mel MacCoubrey pointed out on Max and Nick Folkman’s excellent Script Lock podcast, in games “the firefighting hat and the creative hat are the same hat.”3 So it’s your responsibility to build up a realistic picture of the rate at which your team can make progress.

进行垂直切片还可以帮助我们了解我们需要多少来自游戏开发各个传统学科(艺术、工程、动画、音频等)的人员,以及是否需要任何专家的帮助。

Making a vertical slice can also help us realize how many people we’re going to need from each of the traditional disciplines of game development (art, engineering, animation, audio, and so on) and whether we’re going to need any specialist help.

在第 5 章中,我提到我们应该保留一份清单,列出我们使用的所有资源和第三方资源的归属,以及一份游戏制作人员的荣誉清单。确保在制作垂直切片时继续做这两件事。

In chapter 5, I mentioned that we should keep a running list of attributions for any found and third-party assets that we’re using, along with a list of credits for everyone who works on the game. Make sure you continue to do both as you work on your vertical slice.

预生产无法按常规安排

Preproduction Cannot Be Scheduled Conventionally

在 2002 年 DICE 大会上的演讲中,马克·塞尼宣称“可以规划和安排游戏创作”的想法只是一个神话,并赢得了观众的热烈掌声。4

In his D.I.C.E. 2002 talk, Mark Cerny declared that the idea that “it is possible to plan and schedule the creation of your game” is a myth, receiving a round of applause from his audience in response.4

每位经验丰富的游戏开发者都知道,我们这个领域的创造力就像骑着一匹野马。它会带我们到处游走,在我们发现游戏玩法、故事和开发方法的真相时,总会将我们引向意想不到的新方向。这就是创造力之美的一部分,它让每一次开发经历都成为一次独特的旅程,让我们能够从中学到关于设计过程、游戏和我们自己的新知识。

Every experienced game developer knows that creativity in our field is like riding a bucking horse. It pulls us this way and that, always leading us in unexpected new directions as we make discoveries about the realities of our gameplay, our story, and our development methods. That’s part of the beauty of creativity, and it’s what makes every development experience a unique journey, where we can learn new things about the design process, about games, and about ourselves.

当 Mark Cerny 说我们无法规划和安排游戏的创作时,他并不是说我们不会安排项目的任何部分。我曾与 Mark 密切合作,因此我知道他非常重视游戏项目整个制作阶段的良好安排。他解释说,在预制作期间,当我们确定要制作的内容的基本模板时,项目不能按照任务列表和里程碑进行。

When Mark Cerny says that we can’t plan and schedule the creation of a game, he isn’t saying that we won’t schedule any part of our project. Having worked closely with Mark, I know how much he values good scheduling for the full production phase of a game project. He is explaining that during preproduction, when we’re figuring out the basic template for what we’re going to make, the project can’t be run according to task lists and milestones.

当我们通过构建垂直切片进行设计时,我们正在寻找那种顿悟时刻!就像阿基米德注意到洗澡水上升一样,我们最终通过实际工作了解了游戏设计的一些理论。许多人认为,达到这一顿悟时刻的最佳方式是自由而直观地工作——而且你不能按计划行事。在他的演讲中,马克·塞尼将此称为预生产阶段的“重要混乱”,并表示我们必须允许它混乱,否则它就无法正常工作。

When we’re designing-by-building a vertical slice, we’re looking for that eureka! moment when, like Archimedes noticing his bathwater rise, we finally understand something theoretical about our game’s design because of the practical work we’re doing. Many people feel that the best way to reach this moment of revelation is to work freely and intuitively—and that you can’t schedule your way there. In his talk, Mark Cerny calls this the “vital chaos” of preproduction and says that we must allow it to be chaotic or it won’t work properly.

当然,每位设计师在前期制作期间都会使用某种结构化流程(例如迭代设计循环),您应该使用适合您的任何方法来帮助您找到适合您团队的适量关键混乱。只需尽力保持事情的松散和适应性即可。

Of course, every designer will use some kind of structured process during preproduction—the iterative design loop, for example—and you should use whatever methods work for you, to help you find the right amount of vital chaos for your team. Just do your best to keep things loose and adaptable.

时间盒

Timeboxing

虽然预生产不能按照常规安排,但这并不意味着我们应该让它无限期地进行下去。时间盒是项目管理中一个众所周知的概念,在敏捷开发中被广泛使用。当你为工作设定时间盒时,你会给它设定一个固定的时间量。如果你开始用完时间,你就必须减少你正在处理的任务范围,因为时间盒的长度是固定的。这样一来,时间盒就像在下快棋——你有一些时间去思考,然后你必须采取行动做出决定。

Just because preproduction can’t be scheduled conventionally, that doesn’t mean we should allow it to run on indefinitely. Timeboxing is a well-known concept from project management that is used a lot in agile development. When you timebox your work, you give it a set amount of time. If you start to run out of time, you have to reduce the scope of the task you’re working on, because the length of the timebox is fixed. In this way, timeboxing is like playing speed chess—you get some time to think, and then you must act to make a decision.

约束是设计师最好的朋友,因为约束能激发我们的创造力。它们给我们提供具体的问题来解决,迫使我们以超出常规的方式思考。约束可以帮助我们克服“白纸问题”,因为它以挑战的形式给我们一个起点,并且可以给我们动力和专注力。时间盒是时间上的约束,因此它可以帮助我们停止拖延。它促使我们采取行动,帮助我们对游戏设计做出更具体的决定。从实际角度来看,能够在规定时间内完成工作对于确保项目资金和在里程碑时获得报酬非常重要。

A constraint is a designer’s best friend, because constraints bring out our creativity. They give us concrete problems to solve and force us to think beyond our usual ways of doing things. Constraints can help us overcome the “blank-sheet-of-paper problem” by giving us a starting point in the form of a challenge, and they can give us motivation and focus. Timeboxing is a constraint in time, and so it can help us stop procrastinating. It nudges us into action, helping us to make ever more specific decisions about the design of our game. In practical terms, being able to deliver work within a set time is important for securing funding for a project and for getting paid at milestones.

时间限制的诀窍是时刻关注时钟,了解何时必须开始收尾。我们所有人都可以永远摆弄我们正在制作的东西,特别是如果我们喜欢制作它的话。但总有一天你不再真正打磨它了;你只是在做更多的改变。要记住的一句格言是列奥纳多·达芬奇经常说的:“艺术永远不会完成,只会被抛弃。”每个有创造力的人都必须决定他们的作品什么时候才足够好。游戏设计师通常可以指望他们的游戏测试员来告诉他们,随着经验的积累,你会发现更容易知道什么时候事情完成了。

The trick of timeboxing is to keep one eye on the clock and understand when you have to start wrapping everything up. We could all keep fiddling forever with something we’re making, especially if we’re enjoying making it. But there comes a time when you’re not really polishing anymore; you’re just making more changes. A good maxim to keep in mind is one often attributed to Leonardo da Vinci: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Each creative person has to decide when their work is good enough. Game designers can often look to their playtesters to tell them, and as you gain experience you will find it easier to know when something is done.

有时,您快要到达时间限制的末尾,但工作却还没有完成或还不够好。这时,您就应该与合作伙伴和利益相关者进行讨论。谈谈您要实现的目标、您认为需要花费多少时间,以及您是否应该更改计划,尝试实现更少的目标或不同的目标。

Sometimes you get close to the end of a timeboxing period, and the work is simply not finished or not yet good enough. That’s the time to have a discussion with your collaborators and stakeholders. Talk about what you’re trying to achieve, how much time you think it will take, and whether you should change your plans to try and achieve fewer things or different things.

软件开发人员将这份可实现事项列表称为项目范围,我们将在本书中讨论项目范围、重新确定范围和范围蔓延。当然,最好在时间限制结束之前讨论范围。随着经验的积累,大多数游戏设计师在接近时间限制结束的里程碑时,越来越习惯于随时重新确定范围。

Software developers call this list of achievable things the scope of a project, and we’ll be talking about project scope, rescoping, and scope creep throughout the course of this book. Of course, it is better to have this discussion about scope before we reach the end of a timebox. Most game designers, as they gain experience, become more and more comfortable with rescoping on the fly as they approach the milestone marking the end of a timeboxed period.

这里有一种方法可以考虑范围。众所周知,1938 年的闹剧喜剧《育婴奇谭》对《神秘海域:德雷克的宝藏》的设计产生了巨大影响。游戏导演艾米·亨尼格从凯瑟琳·赫本和加里·格兰特之间的快速对话中获得灵感,创作了埃琳娜·费舍尔和内森·德雷克的角色。《育婴奇谭》的导演霍华德·霍克斯曾被问及一部伟大电影的本质。他的回答是:“三个精彩的场景,没有糟糕的场景。”

Here’s one way to think about scope. The 1938 screwball comedy Bringing Up Baby famously had a big influence on the design of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Game director Amy Hennig took inspiration from the rapid-fire banter between Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in writing the characters of Elena Fisher and Nathan Drake. The director of Bringing Up Baby, Howard Hawks, was once asked to define what made a great movie. His answer was, “Three great scenes, no bad ones.”

游戏也是如此。我在职业生涯的初期就了解到,玩家不会因为时间不够而错过你没有放入游戏中的东西,但他们注意到游戏中的糟糕之处,因为你没有时间让它们变得更好。作为一名游戏设计师,你是一个系统思考者,所以你知道一小套规则可以创造一个巨大而迷人的“可能性空间”(玩游戏时可能发生的所有不同事情的抽象空间)。所以,当你开始没有时间时,不要急着把所有东西都塞进你的游戏里,而是从设计中删掉一些东西,利用你已有的东西,让现有的部分以更系统有趣的方式互动。你可能需要注意久经考验的写作建议,并“放弃你的最爱”,放弃那些不真正属于游戏的想法,即使它们对你来说可能意义重大。

And so it goes for games. I learned back at the start of my career that players won’t miss the things you don’t put into your game for want of time, but they will notice things in your game that are bad because you ran out of time to make them good. As a game designer, you’re a systems thinker, so you know that a small set of rules can create a huge and fascinating “possibility space” (the abstract space of all of the different things that might happen when a game is played). So, when you start to run out of time, instead of racing to cram everything into your game, cut some things from the design, work with what you have, and make the parts that are present interact in more systemically interesting ways. You may need to take note of the time-tested writing advice and “kill your darlings,” letting go of ideas that don’t truly belong in the game, even though they might mean a lot to you.

当您在垂直切片上设定时间限制时,请记住并非所有事情都需要在预生产结束前完成。Mark Cerny 说:“您无法安排解决所有看似棘手的问题的日期。” 5专注于设计的核心,并运用您的技能和判断力来确定哪些问题可以等到全面生产(预生产之后的项目阶段)后再解决。

When you’re timeboxing work on your vertical slice, remember that not everything needs to be completed by the end of preproduction. Mark Cerny says, “You can’t schedule the date when you will have worked out all of your seemingly intractable problems.”5 Focus on the core of your design and use your skill and judgment to figure out which issues you can wait to resolve later during full production (the project phase that comes after preproduction).

使用时间限制可以帮助您摆脱拖延的坏习惯,并通过行动来坚持自己的想法。对每个项目阶段(而不仅仅是预生产阶段)进行时间限制,可以可靠地帮助我们推进项目,在正确的时间做出正确的决定。如果有像我这样的游戏设计教授为您布置任务,那么做到这一点会更容易,但是如果您是专业团队的一员,请记住您的制作人对于让您按时完成任务的重要性。

Use timeboxing to help you break your bad habits of procrastination and commit to your ideas through action. Timeboxing each project phase, not just preproduction, reliably helps us to move forward through the project, committing to the right decisions at the right times. It’s easier to do this when you have a game design professor like me setting you assignments, but if you’re on a professional team, remember how important your producers are in holding you accountable to getting things done on time.

在创建垂直切片时,要善待你的团队和你自己。有时前期制作很容易,有时很难。边设计边制作很有挑战性工作中,有许多不同的因素在起作用:智力、情感、抱负和艺术。确保你和你的团队从你的导师、朋友和专业同行那里得到你需要和应得的帮助和支持。

Be kind to your team and to yourself during the creation of the vertical slice. Sometimes preproduction is easy, and sometimes it’s hard. Designing-by-making is challenging work, with many different factors in play: intellectual, emotional, aspirational, and artistic. Make sure that you and your team get the help and support you need and deserve, from your mentors, your friends, and your professional peers.

请记住,出色的游戏设计并不一定源自天赋或出色的技术能力。通常,出色的游戏设计源自于做出决定、灵活思考如何实现体验目标以及仔细记录玩家的成功之处。不要忽视看似微不足道的成功。通过抓住玩家哪怕最简单的积极反应,并通过更多的设计工作将其放大,我们可以制作出真正出色、情感深刻且令人难忘的游戏。

Remember that great game design does not necessarily come from innate genius or outstanding technical ability. More usually, it comes from simply committing to a decision, thinking flexibly about how to achieve an experience goal, and taking careful note of what is succeeding with players. Don’t overlook successes that seem modest or trivial. By seizing on even the simplest positive reaction from a player and amplifying it with more design work, we can make truly great, deeply emotional, and highly memorable games.

在你们努力克服这一挑战的过程中,请保持耐心。如果你们互相鼓励,互相指导,共同度过难关,你们就会像我一样看到垂直切片:它是实践更健康的游戏制作流程的重要工具,也是设计、工艺和艺术统一的体现。

Remain patient with each other as you struggle through this challenging process. If you nurture each other’s efforts, and guide each other through your travails, you will come to see the vertical slice in the same way that I do: as an essential tool in the practice of healthier game production processes, and as embodying the unison of design, craft, and art.

在下一章中,我们将介绍一种严格的游戏测试方法,该方法受到顽皮狗所用流程的启发,可帮助您从构建垂直切片所使用的迭代设计流程中获得最佳结果。

In the next chapter we’ll look at a rigorous playtesting method, inspired by the process we used at Naughty Dog, that will help you get the best results from the iterative design process used in building a vertical slice.

  1. 1. Mark Cerny,“DICE Summit 2002”,https://www.youtube.com/watch ? v=QOAW9ioWAvE,7:21。

  2. 1.  Mark Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOAW9ioWAvE, 7:21.

  3. 2.私人通信,2020 年 5 月 25 日。

  4. 2.  Private communication, May 25, 2020.

  5. 3. Jon Paquette 和 Mel MacCoubrey,Script Lock,第 46 集,2019 年 2 月 18 日,https://scriptlock.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-46-jon-paquette-mel-maccoubrey

  6. 3.  Jon Paquette and Mel MacCoubrey, Script Lock, ep. 46, February 18, 2019, https://scriptlock.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-46-jon-paquette-mel-maccoubrey.

  7. 4. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,3:40。

  8. 4.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 3:40.

  9. 5. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,5:23。

  10. 5.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 5:23.

 

 

12 游戏测试

12    Playtesting

游戏测试是我们游戏制作流程的核心。我已在第 5 章中为您提供了一些简单的游戏测试指南。本章将探讨可在整个项目过程中使用的健康游戏测试实践,并为我们将在第 24 章和第 25 章中讨论的“正式”游戏测试流程奠定基础。

Playtesting is at the heart of our playful production process. I already gave you some simple guidelines for playtesting in chapter 5. This chapter will explore a healthy playtest practice you can use throughout the whole course of a project, and lays a foundation for the “formal” playtesting processes that we’ll discuss in chapters 24 and 25.

当然,在实施过程中,我们应该自己进行游戏测试。大多数游戏开发者在工作时都会自动进行测试,不时运行游戏以查看其外观、声音和玩法。定期与其他人(队友、朋友或路人)进行快速游戏测试也很好,这有助于检查游戏是否大致按照您的预期方式与其他人互动。

Of course, as we implement things, we should playtest them ourselves. Most game developers do this automatically as they work, running the game now and then to see how it looks, sounds, and plays. It’s also very good to regularly do quick playtests with someone else—a teammate, friend, or passerby—to help check that the game is landing with other people in roughly the way that you intend.

我喜欢这个术语“落地”,这是我后来学到的。各种有创造力的人都用它来谈论别人接受他们作品的方式。当某样东西落地时,它就会创造一种体验。这种体验可能会受到欢迎:如果我的游戏让你很满意,我会看到你很享受它,了解它的运作方式,能够逐渐提高你的技能或兴趣,并想玩得更多。我认为你正在经历你喜欢或欣赏的体验。如果我的游戏让你很失望,我可能会看到很多让你想停止玩的东西。你可能会觉得很沮丧,因为你不理解它,或者你可能认为你理解了它,但其实是错的。它可能太难了,你看不到任何方法来提高你需要的技能来做得更好。它可能不合你的口味,或者它可能会让你感受到你不想感受到的东西。这种广泛而深刻的主观体验领域是我们进行游戏测试时要考虑的事情之一。

I like this term, landing, which I picked up somewhere down the line. Creative people of all kinds use it to talk about the ways that other people receive their work. When something lands, it creates an experience. That experience might be welcome: if my game lands well with you, I see you enjoying it, picking up on how it works, being able to gradually improve your skill or your interest, and wanting to play more. I assume that you’re having experiences that you like or appreciate. If my game is landing badly with you, I might see any number of things that lead you to want to stop playing. You might find it frustrating because you don’t understand it, or you might think you understand it but are mistaken. It might be too difficult and you can’t see any way to grow the skills you need to do better. It might not be to your taste, or it might make you feel something you don’t want to feel. This wide, deep realm of subjective experience is one of the things we’re looking at when we run a playtest.

游戏设计师 Tanya X. Short 谈到了系统的“易读性”。大多数游戏都是由规则、资源、程序和关系组成的系统,游戏系统要想被理解,就必须易读:必须以清晰的方式呈现,让玩家明白其含义。“易读性是指让玩家能够理解游戏试图教给他们的新语言。” 1游戏的易读性是我们进行游戏测试时要检查的另一件事。

The game designer Tanya X. Short talks about the “legibility” of systems. Most games are systems of rules, resources, procedures, and relationships, and for a game system to be understood, it must be legible: it must be presented in such a way that its meaning is clear. “Legibility as in allowing the player to decipher this new language that the game is trying to teach them.”1 The legibility of our games is another thing that we’re checking for when we run a playtest.

设计师模型、系统形象和用户模型

The Designer’s Model, the System Image, and the User’s Model

我喜欢使用设计师模型、系统图像和用户模型的概念来帮助我思考游戏的易读性。它们来自《日常事物的设计》,这是一本影响深远的书,作者是可用性设计师和心理学家唐纳德·诺曼。这本书深受游戏设计师和交互设计师的喜爱,因为它提供了关于人们如何感知和与系统交互的见解。

I like to use the concepts of the designer’s model, the system image, and the user’s model to help me think about the legibility of a game. They come from The Design of Everyday Things, a highly influential book by the usability designer and psychologist Donald A. Norman. This book is beloved by game designers and interaction designers for the insights it offers about how people perceive and interact with systems.

在唐·诺曼看来,设计师模型是设计师在脑海中对游戏(或其他类型的交互系统)的看法。这是“设计师对产品的外观、感觉和操作的构想。” 2系统映像是游戏如何真正呈现给玩家。“系统图像是从已构建的物理结构(包括文档)中得出的。” 3设计师希望这与他们的模型接近,但实际上可能完全不同,特别是在设计的早期迭代中。

In Don Norman’s thinking, the designer’s model is how the designer sees the game (or some other kind of interactive system) in their head. It’s “the designer’s conception of the look, feel, and operation of a product.”2 The system image is how the game actually presents itself to the player. “The system image is what can be derived from the physical structure that has been built (including documentation).”3 The designer hopes that this is close to their model, but it might actually be quite different, especially in an early iteration of the design.

最后,用户模型是玩游戏的人脑子里在想什么。“用户的心智模型是通过与产品和系统形象的互动而形成的。” 4但用户也有自己的经验、偏见和解读系统形象所展示事物的能力(Steve Swink 在《游戏感觉》中谈到的“感知场” )。5会在用户模型和系统形象之间造成理解上的鸿沟。如果系统形象与设计师的模型不太匹配,那么用户模型就会离设计师的模型越来越远,就像“电话”游戏扭曲和歪曲信息一样。正如唐·诺曼所说:“设计师希望用户的模型与他们自己的模型相同,但由于他们无法直接与用户沟通,所以沟通的负担就落在了系统形象身上。” 6

Finally, the user model is what is going on in the head of the person playing the game. “The user’s mental model is developed through interaction with the product and the system image.”4 But the user brings their own experience, biases, and ability to interpret the things that the system image shows them (the “perceptual field” that Steve Swink talks about in Game Feel).5 This can create a gulf of understanding between the user model and the system image. And if the system image doesn’t quite match the designer’s model, then the user model can drift even further away from the designer’s model, like a game of “telephone” warping and distorting a message. As Don Norman says: “Designers expect the user’s model to be identical to their own, but because they cannot communicate directly with the user, the burden of communication is with the system image.”6

经验丰富的游戏设计师第一次听到这个消息时通常会大吃一惊,因为他们已经知道与游戏玩家进行有效沟通是多么困难。我们的游戏和故事中的概念和机制通常很复杂、很抽象,要以可靠的方式将它们传达给玩家非常困难。我们使用的间接沟通方法使情况变得更加具有挑战性。

Experienced game designers often have a shock of recognition when they hear about this for the first time, because they’ve already learned how difficult it is to communicate effectively with the players of their games. The concepts and mechanisms in our games and stories are often complex and abstract, and getting them across to our players in a reliable way is extremely tough. The situation is made even more challenging by the indirect methods of communication we’re using.

为了解决这些问题,我们通常必须通过多个渠道同时向玩家传达相同的概念:系统的外观、元素的形状和颜色、我们看到它的功能、我们通过文本或语音明确说明的内容以及我们设置的训练序列。我们必须分层传递信息,重复沟通(通过多个渠道同时传达相同的内容),直到每个玩我们游戏的人都能理解。

To address these issues, we often have to communicate the same concept to the player through many channels at once: the way the system looks, what shape and color its elements are, what we see it do, what we explicitly say about it through text or speech, and the training sequences we set up. We have to layer the information we deliver, communicating redundantly (communicating the same thing through multiple channels at once) until everyone who plays our game can get it.

可供性和标志

Affordances and Signifiers

唐纳德·诺曼 (Don Norman) 描述了系统图像如何通过“可供性”和“符号”传达给用户。可供性的概念来自心理学家詹姆斯·吉布森 (James J. Gibson),他在其著作《视觉感知的生态学方法》中概述了一种与动物利用环境的方式相关的“可供性理论”。诺曼将这个想法提炼为可供性,定义哪些行为是可能的,以及符号,它“规定了人们如何发现这些可能性:能指就是符号,是可以做什么的可感知信号。” 7

Don Norman describes how the system image gets communicated to the user through “affordances” and “signifiers.” The concept of affordances comes from the psychologist James J. Gibson, who, in his book The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, outlines a “theory of affordances” related to the way animals use their environment. Norman refined this idea into a theory of affordances, which “define what actions are possible,” and signifiers, which “specify how people discover those possibilities: signifiers are signs, perceptible signals of what can be done.”7

可供性和符号的典型例子是一扇门,它只能朝一个方向打开,而不能朝另一个方向打开。设计精良的门会在一侧有一个把手,必须将其拉向你才能打开,在另一侧有一个金属推板,必须将其推开。把手和推板的符号传达了开启的可供性和方向。

The classic example of affordances and signifiers is that of a door which can swing open in one direction but not the other. A well-designed door will have a handle on the side that must be pulled toward you to open it, and a metal push plate on the side that must be pushed. The signifiers of the handle and push plate convey the affordance of the opening, as well as its direction.

人们经常将这两个概念放在一起称为“可供性”,但我们必须认识到可供性和能指是截然不同的。一款电子游戏可能有这样一项功能,如果我在关卡的某个地方静止站立超过五秒钟,我就会立即自动移动到关卡中的另一个地方。这项功能就是可供性:一种使用时会产生结果的机制。但如果关卡中的那个地方没有任何标记,那么这就是一个相当奇怪的功能。我们无法找到这个自动移动点,除非偶然发现,如果没有任何解释就发现自己在关卡的其他地方,那会让人迷失方向。如果我知道它在某个地方,但我不知道在哪里,那么也许我可以通过繁琐的反复试验找到它。这可能看起来像是一个错误,而不是一个功能。

People often run these two concepts together under “affordance,” but it’s important to recognize affordance and signifier as distinct. A videogame might have a feature whereby if I stand still in a certain place in a level for more than five seconds, I automatically and instantly get moved to another place in the level. This feature is an affordance: a mechanism that, when used, leads to an outcome. But if that place in the level isn’t marked in any way, this is a pretty weird feature. We have no way of finding this auto-move spot except by accident, and it would be disorienting to find myself elsewhere in a level without any explanation. If I know that it’s there somewhere, but I don’t know where, then maybe I can find it by a tedious process of trial and error. It would probably seem like a bug, rather than a feature.

但是,如果我们在这个自动移动点放置一个平台,并且平台上有一块发光的地板,可以站在上面,地板会安静地嗡嗡作响,当我站在上面时,地板会开始更大声地嗡嗡作响,也许面板上会倒数一个数字“5、4、3 …… ”,我的玩家角色周围会出现光芒,当我移动到新位置时,会发出类似雷声的音效——那么,我们就设计了一个传送器。平台的符号、发光面板、音效和视觉效果以及倒计时读数都清楚地传达了可供性的功能。在这两种情况下,可供性在功能上是相同的。正是这些符号将无用的游戏机制变成了我们作为游戏设计师的拿手好戏。

However, if we place a platform at this auto-move spot, and the platform has a glowing floor panel to stand on which hums quietly to itself, which begins to hum more loudly when I stand on it, perhaps with a number counting down on the panel, “5, 4, 3 ,” a glow that appears around my player-character, and a zapping, crack-of-thunder sound effect when I’m moved to the new location—then we have designed a teleporter. The signifiers of the platform, the glowing panel, the sound effects and visual effects, and the countdown readout, all clearly convey the functioning of the affordance. The affordance is functionally the same in both cases. It is the signifiers that turn something useless as a game mechanic into a part of our stock-in-trade as game designers.

游戏测试的可读性和体验

Playtesting for Legibility and Experience

希望你能开始想象我们如何通过游戏测试来调查这些相对客观的易读性问题。只需观察人们玩游戏,我们就能发现设计师的模型、系统形象和用户之间的重叠或脱节模型,以及通过符号传达可供性的方式。通过提出后续问题,我们可以加深对游戏测试员理解的了解

Hopefully you can start to imagine how we can investigate these relatively objective issues of legibility through playtesting. Just by watching people play, we can look at the overlap or disconnect between the designer’s model, the system image, and the user’s model, and the way that affordances are communicated through signifiers. By asking follow-up questions, we can refine our understanding of our playtesters’ understanding.

我们还可以通过游戏测试来调查人们在玩我们的游戏时的体验,虽然这个过程可能更为复杂,因为它更加主观,但我们可以通过使用同样的技术,即观察人们玩游戏并在之后与他们交谈,学到很多东西。为了了解我们的游戏如何吸引人们——无论是游戏的可读性还是他们创造的体验——我们应该采用一些最佳实践来帮助指导我们的游戏测试过程。

We can also use playtesting to investigate the experiences that people have when they play our games, and while this process can be rather more complex because it’s much more subjective, we can learn a lot by using the same techniques of watching people play and talking to them afterward. In order to look at how our games land with people—in terms of both the legibility of our games and the experiences they create—we should adopt some best practices to help guide our playtest process.

游戏测试的最佳实践

Best Practices for Playtesting

在我的专业实践过程中,我根据从导师那里学到的知识、阅读材料以及我在工作室中看到的行之有效的做法,制定了一套游戏测试的最佳实践。游戏测试的最佳实践始终取决于游戏及其环境,但这些基本规则灵活且适应性强,同时也适用于大多数情况。让我们开始吧。

Over the course of my professional practice, I developed a set of best practices for playtesting, based on what I learned from my mentors and my reading, and things that I saw working well in the studio. Best practices for playtesting will always be dependent on the game and its context, but these basic ground rules are flexible and adaptable, while also being appropriate for most situations. Let’s dive right in.

在测试前和测试期间尽量减少与游戏测试员的对话

Minimize Your Conversation with Your Playtester before and during the Test

在游戏测试开始前,要有礼貌:向游戏测试员打招呼,并邀请他们坐下准备玩游戏。除此之外,至少要与他们交谈。在游戏测试员开始玩游戏之前或玩游戏时,绝对不要告诉他们任何有关游戏的信息。无论如何,你必须避免甚至无意中泄露任何会影响你收到的游戏反馈的信息。

Before the playtest starts, be polite: say hello to your playtester, and invite them to sit down and get ready to play. Beyond that, speak to them at a bare minimum. Definitely do not tell your playtester anything about your game before they start to play or while they play it. At all costs, you must avoid even accidentally giving away any information that will prejudice the feedback that you get about your game.

游戏测试员和设计师都应佩戴耳机

Use Headphones for Both Playtesters and Designers

当你观看游戏测试时,你必须听到玩家听到的内容,也必须看到他们看到的内容。游戏的音频与视觉效果同样重要,在塑造玩家情绪方面发挥着巨大作用。在一个同时测试多款游戏的房间里,游戏设计师听到游戏测试员听到的内容的唯一可靠方法是让他们都戴着连接到游戏的耳机。一个简单的方法是使用立体声音频分配器连接多副耳机,并为设计师使用音频延长线,设计师通常坐在游戏测试员后面不远处。无线耳机技术使这变得更加容易和方便,尽管成本更高。

As you watch the playtest, you must hear what your players hear, as well as seeing what they see. A game’s audio is as important as its visuals and plays a huge role in shaping players’ emotion. In a room where many games are being tested at once, the only reliable way for the game designer to hear what the playtester is hearing is to have them both wearing headphones that are connected to the game. A simple way to approach this is to use a stereo audio splitter to connect multiple pairs of headphones, and an audio extension cable for the designer, who is usually sitting a short distance behind the playtester. Wireless headphone technology makes this even easier and more convenient, although at a higher cost.

必要时准备一份控制备忘单

Prepare a Controls Cheat Sheet if Necessary

精心设计的游戏通常会通过逐一介绍控制机制并让玩家练习每一种来教会玩家如何控制游戏。然而,在开发初期的游戏通常不会包含任何此类培训。一些设计师只是口头解释游戏的控制方式,从而在游戏测试过程中引入了多变性和偏见。经验丰富的游戏设计师会通过快速准备一份控制备忘单来显示控制方案,从而使事情变得更加客观。并向每位游戏测试员展示同一张表格(见图12.1)。可以在游戏测试开始时展示一次,也可以放在附近的桌子上以供持续参考。同样,目标是在游戏测试结束前完全避免与游戏测试员交谈。

A well-designed game will usually teach its players how to control it by introducing the control mechanisms one at a time, and letting the player practice each one. However, a game early in its development often won’t yet include any such training. Some designers just explain the game’s controls verbally, introducing variability and bias into their playtesting process. Experienced game designers will make things more objective by quickly preparing a controls cheat sheet that shows the control scheme, and by showing the same sheet to every playtester (see figure 12.1). It can either be shown once at the start of the playtest or left on the table nearby for ongoing reference. Again, the goal is to avoid talking to your playtester at all until after the playtest.

图 12.1

Figure 12.1

控制备忘单。

A controls cheat sheet.

准备一份书面提示或帮助,以帮助玩家解决任何已知的游戏问题或功能问题

Prepare a Written Hint or Helper to Help Players with Any Known Gameplay Issues or Functional Issues

很多时候,我们测试的游戏会出现一些我们已知的问题,而这些问题会影响我们从玩家那里获得良好反馈的能力。也许我们在游戏测试前重新照亮了关卡,现在一个应该很容易看到的门却完全被阴影遮住了。(这在《神秘海域》中经常发生。)也许有一个错误,意味着游戏测试员只有在被告知该怎么做的情况下才能继续。这时就需要使用书面提示或帮助(见图12.2)。写下游戏测试员处理已知问题所需的信息,然后在适当的时候向他们展示,而无需说话。就像控制备忘单一样,这为每个玩家提供了完全相同的信息,使我们的游戏测试统一。但要小心:这种方法只适用于紧急情况,即你知道玩家肯定会卡住,而且不可能自己想出如何继续。

Very often, a game that we’re testing will have an issue we know about, and which interferes with our ability to get good feedback from our players. Maybe we relit the level just before the playtest, and now a doorway that should be easy to see is completely and accidentally hidden in shadow. (This happened to us a lot on Uncharted.) Maybe there’s a bug that means that the playtester can only proceed if they’re told what to do. That’s the time to use a written hint or helper (see figure 12.2). Write down the information the playtester needs in order to deal with the known problem, and then show it to them at the appropriate time, without speaking. Just like a controls cheat sheet, this gives every player exactly the same information, making our playtests uniform. But be careful: this approach is only for use in emergencies when you know that the player is definitely going to get stuck, and couldn’t possibly work out how to proceed on their own.

图 12.2

Figure 12.2

书面的“提示”或“帮助”。

A written “hint” or “helper.”

建议你的游戏测试员大声说出自己的想法和感受

Suggest That Your Playtester Thinks and Feels Out Loud

在游戏测试时“大声思考”——谈论你在玩游戏时的看法和想法——是游戏测试员向游戏设计师提供他们所经历的信息的好方法,而设计师无法通过观察获得这些信息。通过谈论游戏测试员的情绪“大声感受”也能达到同样的效果。有些人比其他人更擅长这一点。设计师应该要求他们的游戏测试员大声思考和感受,然后让他们开始玩。如果游戏测试员在玩游戏时没有开始说话,设计师可以再建议他们说一次,然后就让他们自己玩吧。通过仔细观察游戏测试员,你可以学到的东西几乎和通过倾听他们说的话一样多,你会注意到,当我们所有的注意力都被游戏占据时,大多数人在激烈的游戏过程中都很难说话。

“Thinking out loud” when playtesting a game—talking about your perceptions and the ideas that you’re having while playing—is a good way for a playtester to give the game’s designer information about the experience they’re having that the designer couldn’t get just by watching. “Feeling out loud” by talking about the emotions the playtester is having does the same. Some people are better at this than others. Designers should just ask their playtesters to think and feel out loud and let them start to play. If a playtester doesn’t start to speak as they play, the designer could suggest one more time that they do so, and then leave them alone. You can learn almost as much by watching your playtester carefully as you can by listening to what they say, and you will notice that most everyone has a hard time talking during intense sequences of gameplay, when all of our attention is occupied by the game.

作为一名游戏设计师,你应该练习大声思考和表达感受的技能。这些技能在与队友和其他专业同行合作时非常有用。如果你一开始就详细地告诉游戏设计师你的想法,以及你在看和听他们的游戏标题画面时感受到的情绪,那么当你开始玩他们的游戏时,他们就能为你提供一幅非常丰富和完整的画面。

As a game designer, you should practice your own skills of thinking and feeling out loud. These are very powerful abilities to have when collaborating with your teammates and other professional peers. If you start by telling a game’s designer in detail about the ideas you have and the emotions you feel as you look at and listen to even just their game’s title screen, that can set the frame for giving them a very rich and full picture of how their game lands with you when you start to play.

适当时使用内容警告

Use Content Warnings if Appropriate

内容警告很有价值,因为它让我们可以自由地创作任何我们喜欢的作品,并且帮助我们只向同意观看我们作品的人展示作品。也许是因为游戏与儿童文化有着历史联系,游戏设计师有时不愿意涉及所谓的成人主题。但电子游戏作为一种成熟的娱乐媒介和艺术形式,是看待各种主题的一种完全合适的方式。通过在游戏测试开始时使用内容警告(其作用就像电影的年龄分级),我们可以提醒人们注意他们可能希望避免的任何类型的内容。在线搜索“内容警告”以获取有关对哪种内容使用警告以及如何发出警告的更多信息。

Content warnings are valuable because they free us to make any kind of work we like, and they help us to present it only to people who consent to see the kind of thing we’re making. Perhaps because of the historical associations that games have with children’s culture, game designers have sometimes been reluctant to engage with so-called adult subject matter. But videogames, as a maturing entertainment medium and art form, are an entirely appropriate way of looking at every kind of subject. By using a content warning at the beginning of a playtest, which acts just like an age rating on a movie, we can alert people to the presence of any type of content that they may wish to avoid. Search online for “content warning” to get more information about what kind of content to use warnings for, and how to deliver the warnings.

观察测试员的游戏体验

Be Observant of Your Playtester’s Experience of the Game

仔细观察你的游戏测试员,看看他们在游戏中做了什么。注意他们的反应和行为。他们似乎了解游戏中可以做什么和不能做什么?他们不明白什么?他们试图做什么,不试图做什么?他们表现出什么情绪?

Watch your playtester closely to see what they do in the game. Notice their reactions and behaviors. What do they seem to understand about what they can and can’t do in the game? What do they fail to understand? What do they try to do, and what don’t they try to do? What emotions do they show?

观察游戏测试员的行为和言论,并记录下来

Observe What the Playtester Does and Says and Note It All Down

当你观察你的游戏测试员时,请尽可能详细地记录你的观察结果。记下他们在游戏中做了什么,他们似乎在想什么和感觉什么,以及他们对自己的想法和感受的任何描述。我们中的许多人,尤其是年轻人,都认为我们的记忆就像我们电脑的硬盘一样,是绝对可靠的全记忆设备。事实上,正如心理学家和认知科学家多次证明的那样,记忆是高度不可靠的,并且受到情绪的强烈影响。你对游戏测试环节和游戏的感受会严重扭曲你对玩家行为的记忆。这就是为什么你应该在游戏测试期间写下你注意到的一切。你应该在观察游戏测试员的最初几分钟内写满一页纸,尽可能快地书写或打字,试图记录测试员所做的每一个细节。每当你看到好事或问题时,就把它写下来,每次好事发生或问题发生时都记录一次。然后,当你在游戏测试后回顾笔记时,你就会发现游戏的优点和最大的问题。你会知道你的游戏真正有效的是什么,以及首先要修复什么。

As you watch your playtester, carefully write down your observations in as much detail as you can. Note down what they do in the game, what they seem to be thinking and feeling, and anything they say about their thoughts and feelings. Many of us, young people especially, imagine that our memories are infallible total-recall devices like the hard drives of our computers. In fact, as psychologists and cognitive scientists have proven many times, memory is highly fallible, and is strongly shaped by emotion. The way that you feel about a playtest session and your game will strongly skew your memory of what players do. That’s why you should write down everything that you notice during a playtest. You should have filled a page with notes within the first few minutes of watching your playtester, writing or typing as fast as you can in an attempt to record every last detail of what the tester does. Every time that you see a good thing or a problem, write it down, once for every time that the good thing happens or the problem occurs. Then, when you review your notes after the playtest, the best things about your game and the biggest problems will jump out at you. You will know what is really working about your game, and what to fix first.

根本不要帮助你的游戏测试员

Don’t Help Your Playtester at All

这是游戏测试最基本的原则之一,也是最难遵循的原则之一,即使对于经验丰富的游戏设计师来说也是如此。如果你不被允许给他们任何帮助,观看某人玩一款处于开发阶段的游戏可能会非常痛苦。你的游戏测试员会遇到你所构建的问题,误解机制和故事,难以继续前进,或者完全陷入困境。作为一款游戏作为设计师,你必须鼓起勇气,保持沉默,努力抵制在测试期间以任何方式帮助游戏测试员的诱惑。你必须学会​​将看到游戏测试员挣扎时的痛苦转化为在下一轮设计迭代中修复问题的动力。如果你的游戏测试员在玩游戏时问你问题或向你寻求帮助,请道歉并礼貌但坚定地告诉他们你无法帮助他们,你希望他们继续自己尝试玩游戏。这是清楚地了解你的游戏如何吸引人们的唯一方法,唯一的例外是使用上述的书面提示或帮助。

This is one of the most fundamental principles of playtesting and is also one of the hardest to follow, even for experienced game designers. Watching someone play a game that is mid-development can be excruciating if you’re not allowed to give them any help. Your playtesters will butt up against the problems in what you’ve built, misunderstanding the mechanics and story, struggling to proceed, or getting stuck altogether. As a game designer, you must steel your nerve and remain silent, diligently resisting the temptation to help your playtester in any way during the test. You have to learn to take the pain that you feel as you watch a playtester struggling and transform it into motivation for making fixes in your next round of design iteration. If your playtester asks you questions while they’re playing or appeals to you for help, apologize and tell them politely but firmly that you can’t help them, and that you’d like them to keep trying to proceed in the game on their own. This is the only way to clearly see how your game is landing with people, and the only exception to this is covered by the use of a written hint or helper, above.

注意时间

Keep an Eye on the Time

在游戏测试期间,请时刻注意时间的流逝,这是您提高对游戏测试员和游戏情况的总体认识的一部分。如果您没有收集指标数据(请参阅第 26 章),则应记录玩家在游戏中前进的时间。他们花了多长时间通过第一关和第二关?根据游戏测试的内容,每次测试的时间可能会受到限制。如果您希望游戏测试员看到某些东西(可能是某个关卡),最好留意时间。您还需要预留一些时间,以便之后向他们提问。

Remain aware of the passage of time during your playtest, as a part of your general heightened state of awareness about what is happening with your playtester and your game. If you’re not gathering metrics data (see chapter 26), you should make notes about how much time passes as your player progresses through your game. How long did they take to get through the first level, and the second? Depending on the context of your playtest, the time for each test might be limited. It’s good to keep an eye on the time if there’s something—a level perhaps—that you want to be sure your playtester sees. You also need to reserve some time to ask them questions afterward.

游戏测试结束后,就到了离职面试的时候了

After the Playtest, It’s Time for an Exit Interview

游戏时间结束后,指导游戏测试员进行所谓的离职面谈。这种对话的形式完全由您决定,但我有一些通用的指导原则可以帮助您。首先,向游戏测试员提出一个开放式问题,重点关注您感兴趣的游戏的某些方面。避免问那些可以用是或否或其他简短、简单的答案(如数字)回答的问题。电子游戏项目总监兼艺术家 Marc Tattersall 列出了五个可以问游戏测试员的优秀开放式问题,Alissa McAloon 在游戏行业社区网站 Gamasutra 上报告了这些问题:

When the time for playing is finished, guide your playtester through what is known as an exit interview. The form that this conversation takes is always up to you, but I have some general guidelines to help you. Start by asking your playtester an open-ended question that focuses on some aspect of your game that you’re interested in. Avoid questions that can be answered with a yes or no answer, or with another kind of short, simple answer (like a number). The videogame project director and artist Marc Tattersall created a list of five excellent open-ended questions to ask playtesters, which were reported by Alissa McAloon on the game industry community site Gamasutra:

  • 您最喜欢的时刻或互动是什么?
  • What was your favorite moment or interaction?
  • 您最不喜欢的时刻或互动是什么?
  • What was your least favorite moment or interaction?
  • 您什么时候觉得自己最聪明?
  • When did you feel the most clever?
  • 有什么事情你想做但游戏不允许你做吗?
  • Was there anything you wanted to do that the game wouldn’t let you do?
  • 如果你有一根魔杖,可以改变游戏或体验的任何方面,你会选择什么?不限预算和时间。8
  • If you had a magic wand and could change any aspect of the game or your experience, what would it be? Unlimited budget and time.8

这些问题直指游戏设计中一些重要方面的核心。什么东西会留在玩家的记忆中,是出于好的原因还是坏的原因?游戏什么时候玩家最觉得他们的自主权得到了充分表达还是受到了太多限制?玩家有哪些创意想法是你忽略的?以这些问题为范本,你会问哪些开放式问题?

These questions go straight to the heart of some important aspects of your game’s design. What stays in the player’s memory, for good reasons or bad? When did the player most feel that their agency was given expression or was too restricted? What creative ideas does the player have that you’re overlooking? Using these questions as a model, what open-ended questions would you ask?

通过做笔记或录音,记录下游戏测试员在离职面谈中所说的一切(经他们同意)。在与游戏测试员的对话过程中,尽量不要引导他们表达任何特定的观点,但要跟进他们所说的话——当他们发表一些你觉得有趣但不太理解的评论时,尽量从他们那里获取更多信息。

Capture everything that your playtester says during the exit interview (with their consent), either by taking notes or by making a recording of the conversation. As your conversation with the playtester unfolds, try not to lead them to express any particular opinion, but do follow up on things that they say—when they make a comment that you find interesting but don’t quite understand, try to draw more out of them.

游戏设计师兼制作人 Alan Dang 就儿童游戏测试的说明:“在提问时,与孩子一起测试可能很困难,因为他们往往想取悦成年人,不希望与自己产生负面情绪。解决这个问题的一种方法是询问孩子,他们会如何向朋友或同龄人描述这款游戏,或者他们认为其他人会怎么想。” 9

A note about playtesting games for children from game designer and producer Alan Dang: “When asking questions, testing with kids can be hard since they tend to want to please adults and don’t want negativity associated with them. One way around that is to ask kids how they would describe this game to a friend or a person at their age, or what they think someone else would think.”9

不要成为游戏解释者

Don’t Be a Game-Explainer

在离职面试时,许多游戏设计师都有一种强烈的冲动,想向测试员解释他们的游戏 — — 游戏是如何运作的,故事情节意味着什么,以及玩家误解了什么。抵制这种诱惑。你可能只是想补充一些关于你打算如何设计的细节,以便获得更好的反馈(最终可能会有这样的机会)。问题是,在几秒钟内,测试员的脑海里就会充斥着他们没有从游戏中获得的概念和问题,他们对自己的体验留下的印象很模糊。你的测试员不理解你的游戏并不重要。重要的是,你要理解他们的用户模型(用唐纳德·诺曼的话来说),以及它与设计师的模型和系统图像有何不同,这样你就可以在下一轮迭代中改进游戏设计。

During the exit interview, many game designers are seized by a powerful urge to explain their game to their playtester—how it works, what the storyline means, and what the player misunderstood. Resist this temptation. You might be trying just to fill in a few details about how you intended the design to work, so as to get better feedback (and there may come a time for that, eventually). The problem is that within seconds, the playtester’s head is swimming with concepts and questions that they didn’t get from playing the game, and they are left with a clouded impression of their experience. It doesn’t matter that your playtester didn’t understand your game. What matters is that you come to understand their user model, in Donald Norman’s terms, and how it differs from your designer’s model and the system image, so that you can improve your game’s design with the next round of iteration.

不要气馁

Don’t Get Discouraged

对于设计师来说,游戏测试通常是一个非常情绪化的过程。创意人士通常会将自己大量的精力投入到他们所制作的东西中。当我们制作出某样东西并将其展示给其他人时,我们可能会感到暴露、焦虑甚至恐慌,甚至在我们看到游戏效果之前。我们可能会被来自不同游戏测试员的经常相互矛盾的反馈所淹没,最终在设计的迷宫中迷失方向。即使在测试一款精致且运行良好的游戏时,这些困难的感觉也会很强烈——想象一下,对于一个充满问题的新游戏,这些感觉会变得多么强烈、混乱和复杂。如果我们不处理游戏测试过程中出现的情绪,它们可能会造成破坏。它们会让我们想放弃,扔掉我们的游戏,开始一些新的东西。它们甚至会让我们想完全放弃游戏设计。

Playtesting is often a very emotional process for designers. Creative people typically invest a lot of themselves into the things they make. When we make something and show it to other people, we might feel exposed, anxious, or even panicked, even before we have seen how our game is landing. We might become overwhelmed by the often-contradictory feedback that we get from different playtesters and end up feeling lost in the maze of our design. These difficult feelings can be powerful even when testing a game that is refined and working well—imagine how much stronger, messier, and more complicated they are with something new and full of problems. If we don’t deal with the emotions that come up during a playtest, they can be destructive. They can make us want to give up, to throw away our game, and start on something new. They can even make us want to quit game design altogether.

处理这种情况的一个好方法是预测你的情绪,并准备好以任何适合你的方式处理它们。你可以提醒自己,游戏不是设计师,给自己一些情感上的距离。永远不要向游戏测试员表达难以控制的情绪,但我认为,与其“压抑自己的感情”,不如找到一种健康的方式来表达它们。我鼓励游戏设计师小组在游戏测试后互相提供情感支持:如果有必要,可以抱怨和呻吟,表达对游戏测试没有按照他们希望的方式进行的沮丧或悲伤。以一种不具毒性的方式做到这一点——不是卑鄙或刻薄,也不是针对某个人——可以帮助我们放下情绪,让它成为过去。一旦你处理好了情绪,就回顾一下你在游戏测试期间做的笔记。从中挖掘出你的游戏中哪些地方有效,哪些地方无效。对自己诚实,对项目的成功和失败都要负责。开始制定计划来解决问题,并相信下一次测试会更好。几乎总是如此。遵循 Matthew Frederick 在《我在建筑学院学到的 101 件事》中给出的建议:

One good way to deal with this is to anticipate your emotions and to get ready to deal with them, in whatever way works for you. You might remind yourself that the game is not the designer, to give yourself some emotional distance. It’s never okay to express difficult emotion toward a playtester, but I think that rather than “stuffing your feelings” it’s better to find a healthy way to express them. I encourage groups of game designers to offer each other emotional support after a playtest: to complain and moan if necessary, expressing frustration or sadness about the fact that the playtest didn’t go the way they would have liked. To do this in a way that isn’t toxic—not nasty or mean, and not focused on an individual—can help us to let go of the emotion and allows it to move into the past. Once you’ve worked through the emotion, then review the notes that you took during the playtest. Mine them for knowledge about what is working in your game and what is not. Be honest with yourself and own the successes of your project as much as the failures. Start to make a plan to address the problems, and trust that the next playtest will be better. It almost always is. Follow the advice that Matthew Frederick gives in 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School:

耐心地参与设计过程。不要模仿流行的描述,认为创意过程取决于一时一时的灵感。不要试图在一次或一周内解决一个复杂的问题。接受不确定性。认识到大部分过程中的迷失感是正常的。10

Engage the design process with patience. Don’t imitate popular portrayals of the creative process as depending on a singular, pell-mell rush of inspiration. Don’t try to solve a complex [problem] in one sitting or one week. Accept uncertainty. Recognize as normal the feeling of lostness that attends much of the process.10

我希望您发现这份最佳实践列表对游戏测试有用。它们应该被视为指南还是规则?我认为它们非常重要,我将它们用作规则并严格遵守。请记住:规则是用来打破的,永远不应该失去其作用。

I hope that you find this list of best practices useful for playtesting your games. Should they be treated as guidelines or rules? I think that they’re important enough that I use them as rules and follow them strictly. Just remember: rules are made to be broken and should never outlive their usefulness.

进行常规游戏测试

Running Regular Playtests

在我能想到的大多数游戏设计过程中,定期进行游戏测试非常重要,无论是与从未玩过游戏的人一起,还是与很久没玩过游戏的人一起。在专业环境中,这些游戏测试可以采取多种形式:队友之间互相测试、朋友和家人游戏测试、与游戏粉丝社区成员进行抢先体验游戏测试等等——我们的想象力是唯一的限制。在学术环境中,在专注于创作作品的课堂上,我认为几乎每周进行课堂游戏测试或要求学生每周在课外进行游戏测试都是合适的。将游戏测试变成游戏设计实践中根深蒂固的一部分需要付出努力,教师可以帮助学生养成这种健康的习惯。

In most every type of game design process that I can imagine, it’s important to run regular playtests, either with people who haven’t played the game before or with people who haven’t played it in a while. In a professional context, these playtests could take many forms: teammates testing with each other, friends and family playtests, early access playtests with members of the game’s fan community, and so on—our imagination is the only limit. In an academic setting, in a class focused on making creative work, I think that it’s appropriate either to run in-class playtests almost every week or to require students to playtest every week outside of class. It takes work to make playtesting into an ingrained part of one’s game design practice, and teachers can support students in developing this healthy habit.

Mark Cerny 曾经告诉我,也许你只需要 7 位不同的游戏测试员就能了解你的游戏在人们心目中的反响,而且应该每周获得接近这个数量的新游戏印象非常容易。在项目的每个阶段测试您所拥有的一切:构思阶段的原型、预生产阶段即将成为垂直切片的版本以及全面生产阶段处于构建阶段的游戏。学会了解您可以在每个阶段通过游戏测试获得的不同类型的设计见解。

Mark Cerny once told me that perhaps you need as few as just seven different playtesters to understand how your game is landing with people in general, and it should be quite easy to get close to this number of new impressions of your game every week. Test whatever you have at each stage of the project: prototypes during ideation, builds that are on the way to becoming a vertical slice during preproduction, and games that are in some stage of build-out during full production. Learn to see the different types of design insight that you can gain through playtesting at each stage.

通过在整个项目过程中定期进行游戏测试,良好的游戏测试实践将深深植根于我们团队的每个人心中,并且当我们准备在全面制作过程中进行正式的游戏测试时,我们使用的额外工具不会太过繁琐,一切都会顺利进行。

By running regular playtests throughout the course of the project, good playtesting practice will become deeply ingrained in everyone on our team, and by the time we’re ready to run formal playtests during full production, the extra tools that we’ll use won’t be overwhelming, and things will run smoothly.

评估游戏测试反馈

Evaluating Playtest Feedback

理解游戏测试的结果可能很困难,我们必须严格遵守处理过程的方式。仅凭记忆几乎不可能对游戏测试反馈做出连贯的评估,因为记忆会受到情绪的影响。这就是为什么在游戏测试和离职面谈期间做大量笔记很重要,以便客观地记录我们的观察结果。

Making sense of the results of a playtest can be difficult, and we must be disciplined in the way that we approach the process. It’s almost impossible to make a coherent evaluation of playtest feedback based on memory alone, since memory is skewed by emotion. That is why it’s important to take lots of notes during the playtest and the exit interview, to create an objective record of our observations.

在回顾我的笔记时,我发现很多笔记很容易分为以下三类:

In reviewing my notes, I find that a lot of them fall easily into one of three categories:

  1. 破损:必须修复。这些是设计或实施方面的问题,导致玩家无法获得我们想要的体验。可能的修复方法通常非常明显。
  2. Broken: Must Fix. These are problems of design or implementation that keep the player from having the kind of experience we want them to have. The possible fixes are usually quite obvious.
  3. 问题:也许可以修复。这些可能不起作用,至少没有按预期发挥作用,值得进一步调查。这些问题可能存在于设计中(设计师的模型)、游戏(系统形象)或玩家对游戏的理解中(用户模型)。我们必须更仔细地研究这些问题,因为解决方案尚不清楚。
  4. Question: Maybe Fix. These are things that might not be working, at least not as intended, and that warrant further investigation. These problems could be in the design (the designer’s model), in the game (the system image), or in the player’s comprehension of the game (the user model). We must look more closely at these issues because the solution is not yet clear.
  5. 建议:一个新想法。游戏测试期间会出现很多新想法,它们可能是游戏设计中的精华,也可能与我们想要实现的目标完全无关。通过讨论建议,接受一些建议并拒绝其他建议,我们可以完善游戏设计。
  6. Suggestion: A New Idea. A lot of new ideas will bubble up during playtests, and they might be game design gold, or they could be totally irrelevant to what we’re trying to achieve. By discussing the suggestions, accepting some and rejecting others, we can finesse our game’s design.

审查并整理笔记后,打开你写下项目目标的文档。对于每条笔记,问问自己:根据这些反馈采取行动是否有助于我们实现项目目标,尤其是我们的体验目标?当你尝试评估问题和建议类别中的笔记时,这应该特别有用。你通常可以通过在离职面谈中向游戏测试员询问开放式问题来揭露隐藏问题的真实性质。

Once you’ve reviewed and sorted your notes, open up the document where you wrote down your project goals. For each note, ask yourself: would acting on this feedback help us meet our project goals, and our experience goal in particular? This should be particularly helpful when you’re trying to evaluate notes in the question and suggestion categories. You can often expose the true nature of hidden problems by asking a playtester open-ended questions about them in an exit interview.

请记住,虽然游戏测试员对游戏的评价非常有价值(无论是他们自言自语还是在离职面谈中谈论),但也可能具有误导性。玩家可能会误解他们为什么会以某种方式行事:也许是游戏中的某些东西误导了他们。这就是为什么仅仅观察玩家玩游戏是非常很重要。优秀的游戏设计师知道如何在玩家所说和所做之间进行推断,从而准确地描绘出游戏的运作方式。

Remember that while what playtesters say about the game is very valuable (whether they’re thinking out loud or talking in an exit interview), it can also be misleading. The player might misunderstand why they were acting in a certain way: perhaps something in the game was miscuing them. This is why simply watching players play is very important. Great game designers learn how to interpolate between what players say and what they do, to build up an accurate picture of how their game is working.

但是,当有人在游戏测试中难以玩好你的游戏时,一定要小心不要掉入陷阱。永远不要说“他们玩得不对”。这样说是对数字游戏设计的基本知识以及你作为游戏设计师的责任的误解。精心设计的数字游戏会教给玩家:有时是通过教程公开地教,有时是通过让玩家随意玩耍和探索来秘密地教。由于每个游戏的互动性,它们都赋予玩家在游戏限制内表达自己能动性的能力。如果你的玩家玩得不开心,那要么是因为你的设计有问题,要么是因为你的游戏不适合那个玩家。

However, be very wary of falling into a trap when someone struggles to play your game in a playtest. Never say, “They’re not playing it right.” To say this is to misunderstand something fundamental about digital game design, and about your responsibilities as a game designer. A well-designed digital game teaches itself to the player: sometimes overtly, through tutorials, and sometimes discreetly, by just letting the player mess around and make discoveries. Every game, because of its interactivity, empowers the player to express their agency within the constraints of the game. If your player isn’t having a good time, it’s either because of your design or because your game just isn’t right for that player.

你也应该克制住因为“他们就是不懂”而忽视游戏测试反馈的冲动。相反,你应该试着去理解他们为什么不懂。到底是缺少了什么或没有发挥作用,导致游戏测试者无法获得你希望他们拥有的那种体验?是游戏本身的问题还是玩家本身的问题?如果是后者,那么同样,并不是每个游戏都适合每个人,所有艺术和娱乐也是如此。但是太快说“他们就是不懂”是一个错误。在你忽视游戏测试者的反馈之前,一定要确保你已经从他们的反馈中了解到了所有你能了解到的信息。

You should also resist the urge to dismiss playtest feedback because “they just don’t get it.” Instead, try to understand why they’re not getting it. What is missing or not working that is preventing the playtester from having the kind of experience you want them to have? Is it something in the game or is it something in the player? If it’s the latter, then again, not every game is for every person, and the same is true for all art and entertainment. But saying “they just don’t get it” too quickly is a mistake. Be certain that you’ve learned everything you can from the feedback your playtesters give you before you dismiss it.

评估游戏测试反馈的一条基本原则是,我们必须抵制自我防御的冲动。你知道那种感觉:有人说了一些批评性的话——或者听起来批评的话——你的情绪就会爆发。你会在心里大喊:“这太荒谬了!”然后开始在脑海里列出所有认为这是荒谬的理由。你认为你的理由是合理的,但当你事后回顾时,你会发现这些理由是多么的情绪化。

A cardinal rule for the evaluation of playtest feedback is that we must resist the impulse to become defensive. You know that feeling: someone says something critical—or that sounds like a criticism—and your feelings flare up. In your mind you yell, “That’s nonsense!” and you begin to make a mental list of all the reasons why it’s nonsense. You think that your reasons are rational, but when you look at them later you can see how skewed by emotion they were.

注意自己何时会变得防御性十足,在参与之前让自己冷静下来。睡一觉来听取反馈会很有帮助——与反馈保持一定距离可以帮助你更理性地评估批评。如果你在防御性十足的情况下试图谈论某个问题,你很快就会发现自己陷入了争论而不是讨论。

Notice when you get defensive and cool yourself down before you engage. It can be helpful to sleep on feedback—getting some distance from it can help you evaluate criticism more rationally. If you try to talk about an issue when you’re feeling defensive, you might soon find yourself in an argument rather than a discussion.

无论批评是否合理,面对批评时采取防御态度都是人类的祸害,无论是在工作、创作还是个人生活中。这会破坏人际关系,这对项目合作者来说是一个真正的问题。防御态度还会让我们无法获得建设性批评带来的智慧,而这些智慧可以帮助我们制作出优秀的游戏。

Becoming defensive in response to criticism—whether it’s reasonable or not—is the curse of many human endeavors, from our professional and creative lives to our personal lives. It can do damage to relationships, which is a real problem for people collaborating on a project. Defensiveness also denies us access to the wisdom that constructive criticism offers, wisdom that would help us to make our games excellent.

永远不要接受任何非建设性的批评——这些批评只会贬低或诋毁你的工作。远离破坏性的批评,在其他地方寻找我们在第 6 章中讨论过的那种有益且有用的建设性批评。

Don’t ever engage with any criticism that isn’t constructive—that just tears down or denigrates your work. Turn away from destructive criticism and look elsewhere for the kind of helpful and useful constructive criticism that we discussed in chapter 6.

当我尝试评估游戏测试反馈时,我发现最有用的方法就是与熟悉我游戏的人进行讨论。这个人可能是队友、同行或导师。只要听取关于某些有争议、令人不安或令人困惑的反馈的第二意见,通常就能立即弄清楚是否值得花更多时间研究它,或者我们是否可以安全地忽略它。

The thing I find most useful when I’m trying to evaluate playtest feedback is simply discussion with someone else who knows my game well. It could be a teammate, a peer, or a mentor. Just getting a second opinion about some contentious, troubling, or confusing piece of feedback will often immediately clarify whether it’s worth spending more time on or whether we can safely dismiss it.

游戏测试反馈评估清单

Playtest Feedback Evaluation Checklist

  •    观看并聆听。
  •    Watch and listen.
  •    把一切都写下来。
  •    Write everything down.
  •    认真对待反馈——不要采取防御态度,也不要过快忽视它。
  •    Take the feedback seriously—don’t get defensive, and don’t dismiss it too quickly.
  •    反馈是否可以轻松地归类为(1)必须修复,(2)可能需要修复,或(3)一个新想法?
  •    Can the feedback be easily categorized as (1) must fix, (2) maybe fix, or (3) a new idea?
  •    计划修复必须修复的问题。
  •    Plan to fix the must-fixes.
  •    调查可能的解决方案并评估新想法,并对照您的项目目标进行检查。
  •    Investigate the maybe-fixes and evaluate the new ideas, checking against your project goals.
  •    仔细解读玩家所说的内容,并以他们在游戏中所做的事情为指导。
  •    Carefully interpret what players say, using what you saw them do in gameplay as a guide.
  •    与合作者讨论反馈。
  •    Discuss the feedback with a collaborator.

“我喜欢,我希望,如果......?”

“I Like, I Wish, What If ?”

“我喜欢、我希望、如果……会怎样?”是一种有效反馈的技巧,由设计和咨询公司 IDEO 开发。它与我们在第 6 章中讨论的“夹层”有关。我从游戏设计师兼研究员丹尼斯·拉米雷斯那里学到了这种技巧,它是 USC 游戏计划的主要内容。设计师可以在测试彼此的作品时使用这种技巧,它适用于几乎任何主题的有效沟通,包括关于游戏开发过程或团队成员之间关系的讨论。

“I Like, I Wish, What If ?” is a technique for giving feedback effectively, developed by the design and consulting firm IDEO. It’s related to the “sandwiching” we discussed in chapter 6. I learned the technique from game designer and researcher Dennis Ramirez, and it’s a staple in the USC Games program. Designers can use this technique when they are playtesting each other’s work, and it works for effective communication about almost any subject, including discussions about game development process or relationships between team members.

“我喜欢,我希望,如果……会怎样?”技巧非常简单,几乎不需要任何解释。在审查了一些创意作品(可能是测试过游戏或查看过设计文档)后,我们会使用“我喜欢,我希望,如果……会怎样?”这样的短语来组织我们的反馈。例如:“我喜欢这个角色跳跃的游戏感觉——它在空中控制得很好。我希望他们在按下跳跃按钮时能更快地升到空中。如果你缩短或删除跳跃动画的开头会怎样?”

The “I Like, I Wish, What If ?” technique is so simple that it barely needs any explanation. Having reviewed some creative work—maybe having playtested a game, or looked over a design document—we frame our feedback using the phrase, “I Like, I Wish, What If ?” For example: “I like the game feel that this character’s jump has—it controls well in the air. I wish that they got up into the air a little more quickly when the jump button is pressed. What if you shortened or removed the beginning of the jump animation?”

通过“我喜欢”,我们可以表达出我们对作品的欣赏之处。就像夹心一样,这打开了沟通渠道,并建立了尊重和信任的基础。就像夹心一样,我们应该选择我们真正喜欢的东西,并花时间去思考它,这样我们交谈的人就会明白我们真的尊重他们,欣赏他们的工作。对于设计师来说,了解他们的设计中哪些地方是有效的也很有用。

With “I like,” we present something that we appreciated about the work. Just as in sandwiching, this opens the channels of communication and establishes a basis for respect and trust. As in sandwiching, we should choose something that we authentically like, and take the time to reflect on it, so that the person we’re talking to understands that we genuinely respect them and appreciate their work. It’s also useful for designers to hear what is working in their design.

然后,通过“我希望”,我们开始提出建设性的批评意见,说出我们希望我们所评论的内容有什么不同。我认为“我希望”是一个聪明的表述,因为它准确地将评论框定为一个人的观点,同时也表达了对作品欣赏的渴望。如果我们明白对方正在表达一种观点,也许我们就不太可能采取防御态度。“我希望”是一种积极的说法,“我希望它变得更好”,并且对设计师持续不断的迭代工作很有吸引力。

Then, with “I wish,” we begin to open up a line of constructive criticism, by saying what we would like to be different about what we are reviewing. I think that “I wish” is a clever formulation, because it accurately frames the comment as one person’s opinion, and also expresses a desire rooted in an appreciation of the work. If we understand that an opinion is being given, perhaps we’ll be less likely to get defensive. “I wish” is a positivistic way of saying, “I want this to be better,” and appeals to designers in their ongoing and iterative work.

最后,有了“如果……会怎样?”,我们就有机会提出建设性批评意见,提出一个可能实现我们愿望的想法。我们可能会提出一个问题的解决方案,或者建议一个不同的设计方向。说“如果……会怎样?”并向设计师提供我们自己的想法是一种慷慨的行为,也体现了我们希望得到的尊重和欣赏。也许设计师会选择接受我们的想法并在未来的迭代中尝试它。也许他们不会直接接受它,但它会给他们另一个被证明是正确的解决方案的想法。或者也许他们会拒绝它——它可能与他们的另一个设计目标或游戏机制相冲突。

Finally, with “What if ?” we have an opportunity to be constructively critical by offering an idea that might fulfill our wish. We might propose a solution to a problem or suggest a different design direction. Saying “What if ?” and offering one of our own ideas to a designer is a generous act, and one that underlines the respect and appreciation that hopefully are present. Maybe the designer will choose to accept our idea and try it out in a future iteration. Maybe they won’t accept it directly, but it will give them another idea that proves to be the right solution. Or maybe they’ll reject it—it might be in conflict with another of their design goals or game mechanics.

无论结果如何,“如果......会怎样?”是总结特定反馈的好方法;它为关于工作的对话开辟了空间,因为它很自然地促使接收反馈的设计师做出回应。

Whatever the outcome, “What if ?” is a good way to conclude a particular piece of feedback; it opens up room for a conversation about the work, since it very naturally prompts a response from the designer receiving the feedback.

发明这项技术的设计机构 IDEO 认识到沟通是设计流程的一个关键方面,如果我们的设计想要成功,我们就需要很好地相处——即使在艰难的对话中也是如此。斯坦福设计学院Bootcamp Bootleg的作者说:

IDEO, the design agency that created this technique, recognizes that communication is a key aspect of the design process, and that we need to get along well together—even during difficult conversations—if our designs are going to turn out well. The authors of the Stanford Design School Bootcamp Bootleg say:

在设计工作中,设计师依赖个人沟通,尤其是反馈。您向用户征求有关解决方案概念的反馈,并向同事寻求有关您正在开发的设计框架的反馈。在项目本身之外,其他设计师需要交流他们如何作为一个团队一起工作。反馈最好用“我”语句来给出。例如,“我有时觉得你不听我说话”,而不是“你不听我说一句话”。具体来说,“我喜欢、我希望、如果”(IL/IW/WI)是一种鼓励开放式反馈的简单工具。11

Designers rely on personal communication and, particularly, feedback, during design work. You request feedback from users about your solution concepts, and you seek feedback from colleagues about design frameworks you are developing. Outside the project itself, fellow designers need to communicate how they are working together as a team. Feedback is best given with I-statements. For example, “I sometimes feel you don’t listen to me” instead of “You don’t listen to a word I say.” Specifically, “I like, I wish, What if” (IL/IW/WI) is a simple tool to encourage open feedback.11

所以,试试“我喜欢、我希望、如果……会怎样?”,看看效果如何。这是一个简单但复杂的工具,可以让你成为更有效的沟通者,并帮助在团队中营造一种尊重和信任的环境。

So try “I Like, I Wish, What If ?” and see how it works for you. It’s a simple but sophisticated tool for becoming a more effective communicator, and for helping to create an environment of respect and trust on a team.

设计师和艺术家的游戏测试

Playtesting for Designers and Artists

艺术与设计之间的区别很有趣。许多有创造力的人既是设计师又是艺术家,设计的实用性和艺术的超越性之间的界限充其量是模糊的,甚至不存在。例如,设计精美的字体当然值得我们视为艺术品,许多当代艺术博物馆都收藏设计作品。

The distinction between art and design is an interesting one. Many creative people are both designers and artists, and the boundary between the utility of design and the transcendence of art is blurry at best or even nonexistent. A beautifully designed typeface, for example, certainly seems to warrant our consideration as a work of art, and many contemporary art museums house design collections.

艺术创作中存在这样一种态度:“这是我的作品:我不需要解释或证明它。”但当代艺术家似乎越来越关心他们的作品如何与人们产生共鸣。设计和艺术越来越多地参与社会倡导、政治活动和道德干预。在她的书《设计作为一种态度》中,设计评论家爱丽丝·罗斯索恩强调诚信是“一个不可谈判的要素她说,“如果我们对一个设计项目的任何方面——从开发、测试、制造到分销、销售、营销……——的伦理或生态影响感到不舒服,我们就不太可能认为它是可取的。” 12除此之外,艺术还可以通过强调不公正和建议更公平的未来来影响世界的积极变化。

There’s a place in artmaking for an attitude of “This is my work: I do not need to explain or justify it.” But contemporary artists seem increasingly interested in the ways that their work lands with people. Design and art are increasingly engaging in social advocacy, political activism, and ethical intervention. In her book Design as an Attitude, design critic Alice Rawsthorn highlights integrity as “a nonnegotiable ingredient of desirable design.” She says, “If we have any reason to feel uncomfortable about the ethical or ecological implications of any aspect of a design project—from its development, testing, and manufacturing, to distribution, sales, marketing we are unlikely to find it desirable.”12 Beyond that, art has opportunities to effect positive change in the world by highlighting injustice and suggesting more equitable futures.

我希望大家清楚,游戏测试作为游戏设计过程的一部分具有很大的实用性,无论我们设计的游戏是娱乐性、趣味性、艺术性还是受影响相关考虑驱动。但我希望本书中描述的实践(包括游戏测试)不仅仅对游戏设计师、交互设计师和体验设计师有用。我希望它们对所有类型的艺术家都同样有用,并通过促进艺术家和观众之间更深层次的联系,引领更丰富、更全面的创作实践。

I hope it’s clear that playtesting has great utility as part of a game design process, whether we’re designing a game that is entertaining, interesting, artistic, or driven by impact-related considerations. But I hope that the practices described in this book, including playtesting, are not just useful for game designers, interaction designers, and experience designers. I hope that they will prove equally useful to artists of all kinds, and will lead toward a richer, fuller creative practice, by fostering a deeper connection between artist and audience.

  1. 1. Tanya X. Short,“如何以及何时让你的程序性可被玩家识别”,2018 年游戏用户体验峰会,https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=r6rTMGFXktI 。

  2. 1.  Tanya X. Short, “How and When to Make Your Procedurality Player-Legible,” Game UX Summit 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6rTMGFXktI.

  3. 2 . 诺曼,《设计日常事物》,32。

  4. 2.  Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, 32.

  5. 3 . 诺曼,《设计日常事物》,32。

  6. 3.  Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, 32.

  7. 4 . 诺曼,《设计日常事物》,32。

  8. 4.  Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, 32.

  9. 5 . Swink,游戏感觉,50。

  10. 5.  Swink, Game Feel, 50.

  11. 6 . 诺曼,《设计日常事物》,32。

  12. 6.  Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, 32.

  13. 7.诺曼,《设计日常事物》,第十五卷。

  14. 7.  Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, xv.

  15. 8. Alissa McAloon,“为了获得有意义的反馈,你应该问游戏测试员的 5 个问题”,Gamasutra,2016 年 10 月 10 日,https: //www.gamasutra.com/view/news/283044/5_questions_you_should_be_asking_playtesters_to_get_meaningful_feedback.php 。

  16. 8.  Alissa McAloon, “5 Questions You Should Be Asking Playtesters to Get Meaningful Feedback,” Gamasutra, October 10, 2016, https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/283044/5_questions_you_should_be_asking_playtesters_to_get_meaningful_feedback.php.

  17. 9.私人通信,2020年5月10日。

  18. 9.  Private communication, May 10, 2020.

  19. 10 . Frederick,《我在建筑学校学到的 101 件事》,81。

  20. 10.  Frederick, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, 81.

  21. 11. Thomas Both 和 Dave Baggeroer,《设计思维训练营 Bootleg》,2020 年 12 月 10 日访问,https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/the-bootcamp-bootleg

  22. 11.  Thomas Both and Dave Baggeroer, “Design Thinking Bootcamp Bootleg,” accessed December 10, 2020, https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/the-bootcamp-bootleg.

  23. 12 . Rawsthorn,《设计作为一种态度》,123。

  24. 12.  Rawsthorn, Design as an Attitude, 123.

 

 

13 同心发展

13    Concentric Development

宇宙为何有层级结构——一个寓言

Why the Universe Is Organized into Hierarchies—a Fable

曾经有两位钟表匠,一个叫霍拉,一个叫坦普斯。他们两人都制作精美的手表,都拥有众多客户。人们光顾他们的商店,他们的电话不断响起,有新订单。然而,多年来,霍拉生意兴隆,而坦普斯却变得越来越穷。这是因为霍拉发现了等级制度的原理。

There once were two watchmakers, named Hora and Tempus. Both of them made fine watches, and they both had many customers. People dropped into their stores, and their phones rang constantly with new orders. Over the years, however, Hora prospered, while Tempus slowly became poorer and poorer. That’s because Hora discovered the principle of hierarchy.

Hora 和 Tempus 制作的手表每只都由大约一千个零件组成。Tempus 组装手表的方式是,如果他将一块手表的一部分组装好,然后放下它(比如说接电话),它就会散架。当他回来时,Tempus 必须从头再来。他的客户给他打电话越多,他就越难找到足够的时间来完成一只手表。

霍拉的手表并不比坦帕斯的手表复杂,但她组装了大约十个元件的稳定组件。然后她将其中十个组件组装成一个更大的组件;而这十个组件则构成了整块手表。每当霍拉不得不放下一块半成品手表去接电话时,她只会损失一小部分工作。因此,她制造手表的速度比坦帕斯快得多,效率也高得多。

只有存在稳定的中间形式,复杂系统才能从简单系统演化而来。由此产生的复杂形式自然会是层次化的。这或许可以解释为什么层次结构在自然界呈现给我们的系统中如此常见。在所有可能的复杂形式中,只有层次结构才有时间演化。1

The watches made by both Hora and Tempus consisted of about one thousand parts each. Tempus put his together in such a way that if he had one partly assembled and had to put it down—to answer the phone, say—it fell to pieces. When he came back to it, Tempus would have to start all over again. The more his customers phoned him, the harder it became for him to find enough uninterrupted time to finish a watch.

Hora’s watches were no less complex than those of Tempus, but she put together stable subassemblies of about ten elements each. Then she put ten of these subassemblies together into a larger assembly; and ten of those assemblies constituted the whole watch. Whenever Hora had to put down a partly completed watch to answer the phone, she lost only a small part of her work. So she made her watches much faster and more efficiently than did Tempus.

Complex systems can evolve from simple systems only if there are stable intermediate forms. The resulting complex forms will naturally be hierarchic. That may explain why hierarchies are so common in the systems nature presents to us. Among all possible complex forms, hierarchies are the only ones that have had the time to evolve.1

什么是同心发展?

What Is Concentric Development?

同心开发是一种游戏开发策略,它帮助我们找到大多数游戏开发者面临的许多难题的解决方案。为了制作这款游戏​​,我们想实现很多目标,但是:

Concentric development is a game development strategy that helps us find solutions to a number of difficult problems that most game developers face. We have a long list of things we want to implement to make this game, but:

  • 我们应该按照什么顺序建造它们?
  • What order should we build them in?
  • 这是我们使这个游戏变得出色的正确清单吗?
  • Is this even the right list of things we need to make this game great?
  • 如果其中一些事情的完成时间比我们想象的要长得多,会发生什么?(在游戏开发中,我们所创造的大多数东西的完成时间都比我们想象的要长得多,这是因为我们有隐藏的假设、出错的事情、技能的限制、工具的限制或时间上的意外限制,比如生病和缺勤一周。)
  • What happens if some of these things take a lot longer to build than we think? (In game development, most of what we create will take a lot longer to build than we think, because of hidden assumptions we have, things that go wrong, limits on our skill, limits in the tools, or unexpected limits on our time, like getting sick and missing a week of work.)
  • 如果我们需要根据游戏测试或其他反馈做出重大更改,该怎么办?
  • What happens if we need to make major changes based on playtesting or other feedback?
  • 游戏最后会完整吗?如果我们的时间不够,我们所有的碎片还能拼凑成一个连贯的整体吗?
  • Is the game going to come together at the end? If we run out of time, are all the pieces that we have going to knit together into a coherent whole?

我第一次听到“同心开发”这个术语是在 2002 年左右,当时我正在与 Crystal Dynamics 当时的工作室负责人 John Spinale 交谈。John 如今最为人所知的身份是 JAZZ Venture Partners 的执行合伙人兼联合创始人,并且拥有媒体和娱乐技术领域的投资者和企业家背景。

I first heard the term concentric development during a conversation with Crystal Dynamics’ then–studio head John Spinale, sometime around 2002. John is best known today as managing partner and cofounder of JAZZ Venture Partners and has a background as an investor and entrepreneur in media and entertainment technology.

有一天,我和约翰讨论了开发游戏的健康方法,以及先构建游戏的核心元素然后再向外扩展的有效性。我发现这种方法在我接触过的许多最聪明的团队中效果很好,约翰主动说他称之为同心开发。当我来到顽皮狗时,我发现他们也采用这种方式,而且已经这样做了很多年。

One day, John and I were discussing healthy approaches to building games, and how effective it is to build the core elements of a game first and then work outward. I had seen this working well as a best practice of many of the smartest teams I’d come into contact with, and John volunteered that he called this concentric development. When I got to Naughty Dog, I discovered that they too worked in this way and had been doing so for years.

以同心方式开发游戏是什么意思?让我们先从基本定义开始。同心意味着从中心开始,向外延伸到围绕并支撑该中心的事物。

What does it mean to develop games in a concentric way? Let’s start with a basic definition. Concentric means starting at the center and working outward to the things that surround and support that center.

想象一下城堡正中央的一座主楼,统治者和财富都隐藏在这里,四周环绕着一层层的幕墙、护城河和路障,如图13.1所示。当我们以中心思想进行开发时,我们将首先建造主楼,以确保我们拥有值得周围事物支撑的东西。这意味着实现游戏的基本元素首先,然后不断完善它们,直到它们完成。这些基本的游戏元素有时被开发人员称为游戏的主要机制。

Think about a keep, the structure in the very center of a castle, where the rulers and riches are hidden away, surrounded by successive layers of curtain walls, moats, and barricades, as shown in figure 13.1. As we develop concentrically, we’re going to build the keep first, to make sure that we have something worthy of support by the things that surround it. That means implementing the fundamental elements of the game first and working on them until they are complete. These fundamental game elements are sometimes referred to by developers as the primary mechanics of the game.

图 13.1

Figure 13.1

城堡的同心结构。

The concentric structure of a castle.

首先实现主要机制,直到它们完成

Implement Primary Mechanics First until They Are Complete

我们很容易将游戏的主要机制视为构成我们在第 10 章中讨论的核心循环的游戏元素。但是,当我们谈论同心开发时,考虑比核心循环中的元素更小的元素集并真正关注游戏中一两个最基本的机制是很有用的。

It’s tempting to think of a game’s primary mechanics as the game elements that make up the core loop that we discussed in chapter 10. But when we’re talking about concentric development, it’s useful to consider an even smaller set of elements than those in the core loop, and to really focus in the one or two most fundamental mechanics in the game.

对于玩家直接控制玩家角色的游戏,角色、摄像头和仅与运动相关的控件为我们展示主要机制的清晰图景。这可能是:

For games with a player-character that is directly controlled by the player, the three Cs of character, camera, and only the controls that relate to movement give us a good picture of the primary mechanics. This could be:

  • 第一人称游戏中的移动和摄像头的控制。
  • The controls for movement and camera in a first-person game.
  • 在横向滚动点击冒险游戏中移动玩家角色和摄像机的算法。
  • The algorithms to move the player-character and camera around in a side-scrolling point-and-click adventure.
  • 在第三人称动作游戏中移动玩家角色和摄像机的控制。
  • The controls to move the player-character and camera around in a third-person action game.

对于没有玩家角色的游戏,我通常会查看玩家直接互动的机制,以帮助我确定游戏的主要机制。这些机制可能是:

For games without a player-character, I usually look at the mechanics that the player is directly interacting with to help me determine the game’s primary mechanics. These could be:

  • 在实时战略游戏中,围绕地图移动摄像机视图,以及简单的点击交互机制。
  • Moving the camera view around a map, and a single, simple click-to-interact mechanic, in a real-time strategy game.
  • 益智游戏中最常用的单一交互。
  • The most commonly used single interaction in a puzzle game.
  • 文字冒险中的文本解析器的基础知识。
  • The basics of the text parser in a text adventure.

由您,设计师,来决定您正在构建的游戏的主要机制。选择您认为能为您的游戏玩法提供坚实基础的任何机制。确定主要机制通常不太难。例如,在《俄罗斯方块》中,主要机制包括一个不断下落直到停在屏幕底部的四格骨牌,以及可以左右移动它以及可以顺时针和逆时针旋转它的能力。对于《模拟城市》来说,它可能是铺设道路瓷砖、建筑瓷砖或分区的能力。对于《模拟人生》来说,也许只是一个模拟市民在房间里走动并与环境中的单个物体互动。对于《热舞革命》来说,它可能只是主游戏循环中最简单的部分:一个节拍沿着轨道向您袭来,当它到达屏幕底部时,您可以踩踏垫子(或按下按钮)。

It’s up to you, the designer, to determine what the primary mechanics are for the game you’re building. Choose whatever you think will provide a solid foundation for your gameplay. It’s usually not too hard to figure out your primary mechanics. For example, in Tetris, the primary mechanics consist of a tetromino that is falling until it comes to rest at the bottom of the screen, and the ability to move it left and right and to rotate it clockwise and counterclockwise. For SimCity, it could be the ability to lay either a road tile, a building tile, or a zoning area. For The Sims, perhaps it’s just a single Sim walking around a room and interacting with a single object in the environment. For Dance Dance Revolution, it might be just the simplest part of the main game loop: a beat coming down a track toward you, and the ability to stamp on a pad (or press a button) just as it reaches the bottom of the screen.

同心开发理念的核心是,我们不会像制作原型时那样,把这些主要机制拼凑在一起。相反,我们会花时间进行完善,直到它们完善为止。这意味着要制作成品艺术、动画、音效和视觉效果,并将它们与优秀的游戏设计和代码结合在一起。

Central to the philosophy of concentric development is the idea that we don’t just slap these primary mechanics together, as we would do when we are prototyping. Instead, we take the time to work on them until they are complete and polished. That means creating finished art, animation, sound effects, and visual effects, and knitting them all together with good game design and code.

对于有玩家角色的游戏,需要实现很多功能才能将角色、摄像机和移动控件引入游戏。对于 2D 游戏,我们必须设计一个角色并创建静止和移动的动画帧。对于 3D 游戏,我们必须为玩家角色构建模型、为其添加纹理、装配,并创建静止、行走或奔跑的动画。我们必须连接游戏的控件,以便我们的输入导致游戏中的移动,并且我们必须创建摄像机控制算法。对于没有玩家角色的游戏,在创建艺术和动画资产以及为控件和摄像机设置它们方面也需要做类似的工作。

For a game with a player-character, there’s a lot to implement to get character, camera, and controls for movement into the game. For a 2D game, we have to design a character and create frames of animation for idling and movement. For a 3D game, we have to build a model for the player-character, texture it, rig it, and create animations for idling and walking or running. We have to hook up the game’s controls so that our inputs result in movement in the game, and we have to create camera control algorithms. For games without player-characters, there’s similar work to do in creating art and animation assets and setting them up for controls and camera.

即使如此,如果我们以中心方式进行开发,我们仍然没有完成。我们还必须完成主要机制的声音设计和视觉效果设计。对于有玩家角色的游戏,我们需要添加脚步声的音频,也许还需要添加视觉效果,比如脚步声扬起的尘土。如果我们角色的某个部位发光,我们需要设置随其移动的光源。如果角色皮肤或衣服的某些方面具有不寻常或独特的外观,我们可能需要在角色模型上使用特殊着色器。

Even then, we’re still not done if we’re developing concentrically. We must also complete the sound design and visual effects design for the primary mechanics. For a game with a player-character, we’ll need to add audio for footsteps, and perhaps visual effects, like puffs of dust thrown up by the footsteps. If some part of our character emits light, we’ll need to set up light sources that move with them. We might need special shaders on the character model, if some aspect of their skin or clothes has an unusual or distinctive appearance.

此外,我们需要为主要机制构建一些背景。对于有玩家角色的游戏,这通常是站立和走动的地方。我们可以创建一个块网格(白盒/灰盒/块状)测试级别来实现此目的。如果有时间,最好创建一些背景图形,这些图形代表游戏发行时一小部分的外观,并可能制作一个我们在第 10 章中讨论过的“美丽角落”。

In addition, we’ll need to build some context for our primary mechanics. For games with a player-character, this is usually a place to stand and to walk around in. We could just create a blockmesh (whitebox/graybox/blockout) test level to serve this purpose. If we have time, it’s better to create some background graphics that are representative of what a small part of our game might look like when it ships, and to maybe make a “beautiful corner” of the kind we discussed in chapter 10.

再次强调,使用同心开发,我们不会开始实现任何次要机制,直到主要机制完成很好的完善程度,并且我们对其设计进行了迭代,改进了控制、动画和游戏感觉,直到这一小组主要机制可以发布(好到可以发布)。次要机制需要坚实的基础作为支撑,如果它们基于尚未完成的主要机制,则无法得到适当的评估。等待完善每个机制的时间越长,不确定性程度就越大,整体设计就越不稳定。正如游戏设计师 George Kokoris 曾经对我说过的那样,在主要机制完全完成之前实现次要机制“就像在地基未干之前就砌墙一样。”

Again, using concentric development, we don’t start implementing any secondary mechanics until the primary mechanics are completed to a good degree of polish and we’ve iterated on their design, improving the controls, animation, and game feel until this small group of primary mechanics is shippable (good enough to be released). Secondary mechanics need a solid foundation to rest on and can’t be evaluated properly if they’re based on primary mechanics that are still unfinished. The longer you wait to polish each mechanic, the more degrees of uncertainty creep in, and the less stable your overall design becomes. As the game designer George Kokoris once said to me, to implement secondary mechanics before the primary mechanics are properly finished would be “like putting up walls before the foundation has dried.”

一旦我们完成了主要机制的实现,我们就可以通过同心机制层次向外进行工作,实现和迭代次要机制,然后再实现和迭代三级机制。

Once we have finished implementing the primary mechanics, we can work outward through a concentric hierarchy of mechanics, implementing and iterating on secondary mechanics and then on tertiary mechanics.

实施二次力学和三次力学

Implementing Secondary Mechanics and Tertiary Mechanics

我认为次要机制是游戏中最重要的一两个玩家活动或动词。这些动词通常是完成游戏核心循环的动词。对于有玩家角色的游戏,这些动词最常见的是:

I think of secondary mechanics as the one or two most important player activities or verbs of the game. These are often the verbs that complete the core loop of the game. For games with a player-character, these would most commonly be:

  • 在一款有关穿越的游戏中跳跃和攀爬。
  • Jumping and climbing in a game about traversal.
  • 战斗类游戏中的主要战斗动作。
  • The main combat actions in a game about combat.
  • 在叙事游戏中与其他角色交谈。
  • Speaking with other characters in a narrative game.

对于没有玩家角色的游戏,这些可能是:

For games without a player-character, these might be:

  • 在实时战略游戏中选择和创建建筑物和单位。
  • Selecting and creating buildings and units in a real-time strategy game.
  • 使完成益智游戏中的关卡成为可能的机制。
  • The mechanics that make it possible to complete a level in a puzzle game.
  • 文本冒险中的文本解析器和文本呈现的高级方面。
  • Advanced aspects of the text parser and text presentation in a text adventure.

我们实施、迭代并完成每个次级机制的所有相关艺术、动画、音频设计、视觉效果、控件和算法,使它们达到可发布的完善水平。我们以这种方式逐个完成每个次级机制,直到它们全部完成。然后(也只有这样)我们才能继续实施和迭代我们的第三级(第三级)机制。

We implement, iterate on, and complete all the associated art, animation, audio design, visual effects, controls, and algorithms for each of our secondary mechanics, bringing them to a ready-to-ship level of polish. We work through each of our secondary mechanics in this way, one at a time, until they’re all complete. Then (and only then) we can move on to implementing and iterating on our tertiary (third level) mechanics.

这些第三级机制将构成我们游戏机制的“下一层”。它们通常在某种程度上依赖于主要和次要机制,并充实游戏的设计。可能需要实现一长串机制。对于具有玩家角色的游戏,它们与玩家可以与之互动的所有内容相关:敌人和友方角色、工具和武器、开关和门、宝藏和陷阱。根据游戏的设计,您可以继续创建游戏机制的层次结构,直至四级、五级和六级(第四、第五和第六级)机制,每个层级都依赖于其上一层级的机制。

These tertiary mechanics will make up the “next layer out” of our game’s mechanics. They are usually dependent on the primary and secondary mechanics in some way, and they flesh out the game’s design. There will probably be a long list of them to implement. For a game with a player-character, they relate to everything that the player can interact with in the world: characters both enemy and friendly, tools and weapons, switches and doors, treasures and traps. Depending on your game’s design, you could continue creating a hierarchy of game mechanics, down through quaternary, quinary, and senary (fourth, fifth, and sixth level) mechanics, each tier being dependent on the mechanics in the tier above it.

只在对游戏设计有用的情况下才这么做。你可能(理所当然地)怀疑层级思维过于简单甚至令人压抑,而且有些游戏的机制可能没有任何层级结构,尽管它们可能仍然是模块化的。目标是以合理的顺序实现游戏机制,始终将事情完成到良好的水平,从可以为游戏提供基础的东西开始。

Only take this as far as is useful for your game’s design. You may (rightfully) be suspicious of hierarchical thinking as simplistic and even oppressive, and the mechanics of some games might not have any hierarchical structure, though they will likely still be modular. The goal is to implement your game’s mechanics in a rational order, always bringing things to a good level of completion, working outward from something that can provide the foundations of your game.

同心开发和设计参数

Concentric Development and Design Parameters

我们玩的许多游戏在设计中都内置了某种设计参数,比如游戏设计师用来规划关卡的空间(有时也是时间)中的隐形网格。例如,玩家角色有多高?他们能水平和垂直跳多远?当他们挥拳或伸手拉杠杆时,他们能向前跳多远?

Many of the games we play have some kind of design parameters built into their design, like an invisible grid in space (sometimes also in time) that game designers use to plan their levels well. For example, how tall is the player-character? How far can they jump, both horizontally and vertically? When they throw a punch or reach out to pull a lever, how far forward can they reach?

在 2D 或 3D 平台游戏中,关卡中平台的放置位置与玩家角色可以跳跃的距离有着至关重要的关系。如果平台之间的距离过远,玩家将无法从一个平台跳到另一个平台。游戏设计师有时会花很长时间布置关卡,然后又改变主意,决定玩家角色可以跳多远。也许他们已经决定他们想让玩家角色看起来更强大一些,所以他们增加了跳跃的高度和水平距离。突然间,玩家可以轻松跳到以前无法到达的地方,并且可以跳过精心设计的游戏玩法的整个部分。然后设计师必须重新开始关卡布局的艰巨任务。

In a 2D or 3D platform game, the placement of the platforms in a level has a critical relationship with the distances that the player-character can jump. Place the platforms too far apart, and the player won’t be able to jump from one to the next. Game designers will sometimes spend a long time laying out their levels and then change their minds about how far they want the player-character to jump. Perhaps they’ve decided that they want to make their player-character look a little more superpowered, and so they extend the height and the horizontal distance of the jump. Suddenly, the player can easily jump to places that were previously inaccessible and can skip past whole sections of carefully designed gameplay. The designer then has to start over with the gargantuan task of level layout.

这个常见问题为同心式开发提供了非常清晰的论据。在我们继续构建我们希望的游戏最终关卡之前,必须牢牢锁定游戏机制的设计参数(决定其基本属性的测量值)。使用同心式开发可以帮助我们在走得太远之前弄清楚游戏设计的这些重要方面。

This commonly encountered problem makes a very clear argument for concentric development. The design parameters of our game’s mechanics—the measurements that determine their fundamental properties—must be locked in firmly before we move on to build what we hope are the final levels of our game. Using concentric development helps us figure out these important aspects of our game’s design before we move too far ahead.

测试级别

Test Levels

在预生产期间,创建 blockmesh 测试关卡,您可以使用它来调整游戏的设计参数并检查游戏机制。团队中的任何人都可以在测试关卡中奔跑、跳跃和攀爬,以尝试游戏机制并完善他们正在开发的内容。

During preproduction, create blockmesh test levels that you can use to dial in your game’s design parameters and check over your mechanics. Anyone on the team can run, jump, and climb around in the test level to try out the mechanics and polish whatever they’re working on.

在角色动作类电子游戏中(例如《神秘海域》系列游戏),移动机制测试关卡包含箱子、坡道、可抓取的壁架和绳索。这些元素以网格形式排列,显示它们在游戏中可能具有的空间关系。例如,我们会放置一些箱子供玩家跳跃,箱子之间的间隙为 1.5 米、2 米、2.5 米、3 米等等。您可以想象其他类型的游戏机制和其他游戏类型的测试关卡。

In a character-action videogame (like the games in the Uncharted series), a traversal mechanic test level contains boxes, ramps, grabbable ledges, and ropes. These elements are laid out in grids showing the possible spatial relationships that they might have in the game. For example, we would place boxes to jump between, with gaps between them of 1.5 meters, 2 meters, 2.5 meters, 3 meters, and so on. You can imagine test levels for other types of game mechanic and other genres of game.

这些测试关卡可以用作实验室或健身房,在我们制作垂直切片时微调和确认游戏的设计参数。它们还可用于我们制作游戏感觉和游戏机制的趣味性(第 22 章中介绍)。它们帮助我们决定不同元素排列的趣味性和难度。重要的是,它们还帮助我们检测代码中是否出现问题,以及我们的设计参数是否在我们不知情的情况下发生轻微变化——例如,如果玩家角色现在可以跳过 6.1 米而不是 6 米的间隙,从而破坏游戏。

These test levels can be used as a lab or gym to fine-tune and confirm our game’s design parameters as we work on our vertical slice. They can also be used as we work on the game feel and juiciness of our game’s mechanics (described in chapter 22). They help us decide the degree of fun and difficulty of different arrangements of elements. Importantly, they also help us detect if something goes wrong somewhere in the code and our design parameters change slightly without our knowing—for example, if the player-character can now jump across a gap of 6.1 meters rather than 6, breaking the game.

边抛光边使用

Polish as You Go

在电影和戏剧界,制作价值是指一部作品在舞台、布景和外观上所花费的金钱的质量。(我认为,这更多的是花在这些事情上的精力,而不仅仅是金钱。)我们也可以将制作价值这一术语应用于游戏,谈论图形和音频设计的质量、视觉效果和灯光,甚至是隆隆作响的振动控制器或手机的触觉设计。当你制作原型时,制作价值通常并不重要,但是它们对垂直部分来说很重要。在垂直部分中,实现良好生产价值的快速途径是边做边打磨,以同心圆的方式工作,分阶段完成和打磨所有内容,从主要机制到次要机制再到第三机制。

In the world of film and theater, production value is the quality of a production in terms of the money spent on its staging, set, and appearance. (I’d argue that it’s more the attention spent on these things, rather than just the money.) We can apply the term production value to games, too, to talk about the quality of the graphics and audio design, the visual effects and lighting, even the haptic design of the rumbling, vibrating controller or phone. When you’re prototyping, production values usually don’t matter much, but they do matter for a vertical slice. A quick path to good production values in a vertical slice is to polish as you go, working concentrically, completing and polishing everything in stages, working from primary to secondary to tertiary mechanics.

正如加州大学洛杉矶分校传奇篮球教练约翰·伍登 (John Wooden) 所说:“如果你没有时间把事情做好,那你什么时候有时间重新做一遍?” 2

As the legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden is quoted as saying: “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”2

不要使用默认值

Don’t Use Defaults

在进行垂直切片时,请使用同心开发,并从一开始就做好构建的一切。使用灯光和声音来营造一种令人回味的时间、地点和情绪感。如果可以在几秒钟内将其更改为您特意选择的设置,请不要将游戏的任何方面保留为游戏引擎提供的默认设置。这尤其适用于天空盒或相机背景的设置以及环境照明设置。优秀的设计师不会使用默认值。快速更改默认值以为您塑造的世界做出贡献,构建上下文,传达信息或提供互动机会。

As you work on your vertical slice, use concentric development and make everything you build good from the get-go. Use light and sound to create an evocative sense of time, place, and mood. Don’t leave any aspect of your game set to the defaults provided by your game engine, if they can be changed in a few seconds to something deliberately chosen by you. This particularly applies to the settings for the skybox or the camera background, and to the ambient lighting settings. Good designers don’t use defaults. Quickly change default values to contribute something to the world you’re shaping, to build context, convey information, or offer opportunities for interaction.

波兰人也可以很朋克

Polish Can Be Punk

认为“精致”或“可交付”必然等同于“华而不实”、“高保真”、“平淡无奇”或“无聊”是错误的。我一直批评游戏行业过去依赖照片写实主义而非风格。幸运的是,事情正在向好的方向发展,我们看到当今电子游戏的视觉美学有了更多的变化、风格化和实验性。美感和趣味性并非来自高端计算性能——它们来自于使用手头的任何工具来表达美丽而有趣的东西。

It’s a mistake to think that “polished” or “shippable” necessarily equates to “slick,” “high-fidelity,” “bland,” or “boring.” I’ve been critical of the game industry’s historical reliance on photorealism over style. Happily, things are changing for the better, and we see a lot more variation, stylization, and experimentation in the visual aesthetics of videogames today. Beauty and interest don’t come from high-end computational performance—they come from having something beautiful and interesting to express, using whatever tools are at hand.

根据我的定义,精致的游戏不必看起来光鲜亮丽或整洁有序。它们可以是粗糙、松散、粗糙、故障多多、模糊或黯淡无光的。我们这一代人会称之为朋克美学。你会为那些通过拒绝主流美学来表达艺术、社会或政治观点的风格命名。我相信朋克风格仍然可以精致。也许“精心制作”、“精心制作”或“精心加工”是更好的术语。

By my definition, polished games don’t have to look shiny or tidy. They can be rough, loose, abrasive, glitchy, blurry, or tarnished. People of my generation would call this a punk aesthetic. You’ll have your own names for styles that make artistic, social, or political statements by rejecting mainstream aesthetics. I believe that punk styles can still be polished. Maybe “worked,” “crafted,” or “tooled” are better terms.

经过长时间的精心制作,由人或机器经过多次系统化流程创作的艺术作品,通常具有难以言表但易于识别的特殊品质。它有深度和趣味性。人们的注意力已经投入其中,吸引并留住了其他人的注意力。因此,在艺术和音频的第一次实现之后,请进行第二次、第三次或第四次迭代。这通常是关键内容出现的时候。

Artwork that has been worked and crafted over time, created by many iterations of systemic process at the hands of a person or a machine, often has a special quality that’s hard to name but easy to recognize. It has depth and interest. Attention has gone into it, drawing and holding attention from others. So, go beyond your first implementation of your art and audio, to the second, third, or fourth iteration. That’s usually when the vital stuff arrives.

同心开发、模块化和系统

Concentric Development, Modularity, and Systems

您可能已经意识到,当我们进行同心开发时,我们正在以模块化的方式构建游戏。模块是更大或更复杂系统的组成部分。大多数电子游戏都是模块化的,无论我们考虑的是游戏的实体和规则,还是编写游戏的代码。正如游戏设计师、程序员和架构师都知道的那样,创作过程越能适应最终结果的模块化,创作过程就越高效,并且(通常,但并非总是)结果也会越好。

You might already have realized that when we practice concentric development, we are building our games in a modular way. A module is a component of a larger or more complex system. Most videogames are modular, whether we’re considering the game’s entities and rules or the code in which the game is written. As game designers, programmers, and architects all know, the more that a creative process can be adapted to honor the modularity of the end result, the more efficient the creative process will be, and (usually, though not always) the better the outcome will be too.

我认为,如果不实施所有细节,就无法真正评估数字游戏或交互式媒体,因为细节在很大程度上决定了游戏是否成功。记住工业设计师 Ray 和 Charles Eames 的建议:“细节不是细节。它们成就了产品。” 3想想为创造良好的游戏感觉和趣味性而进行的所有细致工作。很明显,在游戏设计中,就像在所有设计中一样,每一个细节都很重要,会影响观众对作品的理解、感知和欣赏。即使是一个产生负面影响的小细节也会破坏整个体验。这个想法的一个生动(且极其恶心)的例子是“你介意在汤里放多少便便?”

It’s my belief that you can’t truly evaluate a digital game or a piece of interactive media without all of its details having been implemented, because the details inform so much of what makes a game work or not. Remember industrial designers Ray and Charles Eames’s advice that “the details are not the details. They make the product.”3 Think about all the detailed work that goes into creating good game feel and juiciness. It seems clear that in game design, as in all design, every last detail matters, impacting the audience’s understanding, perception, and appreciation of the work. Even a single minor detail that has a negative impact can spoil the whole experience. One colorful (and profoundly gross) example of this idea is the saying, “How much poop do you mind having in your soup?”

本章开头的钟表匠寓言清楚地说明了以模块化方式构建的好处。如果我们以模块方式构建,我们可以为我们的项目创建稳定的中间形式,使我们能够尽早完成诸如测试(然后迭代)游戏的一小部分之类的事情,而不必等到最后才知道我们所做的是否有效。

The benefits of building in a modular way are made clear by the parable about watchmakers at the start of this chapter. If we build in modules, we can create stable intermediate forms for our project that empower us to do things like test (and then iterate on) a small part of the game early, rather than having to wait until the end to see whether what we’ve made is working.

在他的著作《高级游戏设计:系统方法》中,游戏设计师兼教育家 Michael Sellers 为我们提供了一些额外的背景信息,以帮助我们理解模块化在游戏设计中的重要性。他引入了亚稳态的概念,即“稳定但总是在变化”。他说:“亚稳态的东西通常以稳定的形式存在于整个时间中,但在较低的组织水平上总是在变化。” 4 Mike 继续说道:

In his book Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach, game designer and educator Michael Sellers gives us some extra context for understanding the importance of modularity in game design. He introduces the concept of metastability, which means “stable but always changing.” He says, “Something that is metastable exists in a stable form across time (typically) but is nevertheless always changing at a lower level of organization.”4 Mike goes on to say:

协同作用这个词的意思是“共同努力”。它……最初是由巴克敏斯特·富勒引入现代用法的,他将其描述为“整个系统的行为无法通过其各部分单独行为来预测”(富勒 1975 年)。这是描述亚稳态的另一种方式,其中某些新事物从较低组织级别的部分组合中产生,通常导致部分本身不存在的属性。……

系统是具有自身属性的亚稳态事物,并且其中包含其他低级亚稳态事物,这一观点是理解系统思维和游戏设计的关键点之一。5

The word synergy means “working together.” It was originally brought into modern usage by Buckminster Fuller, who described it as “behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately” (Fuller 1975). This is another way of describing metastability, where some new thing arises from the combination of parts at a lower level of organization, often resulting in properties not found in the parts themselves.

The idea that systems are metastable things with their own properties and that they contain other, lower-level metastable things within them is one of the key points to understand for both systems thinking and game design.5

这里的一个关键思想是巴克敏斯特·富勒的观察:“整个系统的行为无法通过其各个部分的行为进行预测。”当我们将游戏模块连接起来时,游戏设计中就会出现新的模式,这些模式往往是出乎意料的。这可能会导致问题——我们不知道如果我们把这个和那个放在一起,会产生不良后果!我们通常给这些意外问题起名为“错误”、“设计问题”和“漏洞”,我们将在本书的其余部分讨论这三个问题。

One key idea here is Buckminster Fuller’s observation that “behavior of whole systems [is] unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately.” As we connect the modules of our game, new patterns emerge in our game’s design, often coming at us out of the blue. This can cause problems—we didn’t know that if we put this and that together, an undesirable thing would result! We usually give these unexpected issues names like “bug,” “design problem,” and “exploit,” and we’ll be talking about all three throughout the remainder of this book.

然而,这些意想不到的行为也是创造机会的来源。即使我们的游戏设计看起来不太好,在低层次上改变一个小东西也可能会改变它。有时,一开始看起来像是错误的东西可能会成为游戏的最佳功能。最好的情况是给我们带来“突发玩法”,玩家在探索游戏的可能性空间时会发现设计师无法想象的有趣和有趣的情况。

However, these unexpected behaviors are also sources of creative opportunity. Even if our game design seems not to be working, changing one small thing at a low level might transform it. Sometimes, something that starts out looking like a bug can become a game’s best feature. The very best cases give us “emergent gameplay,” where fun and interesting situations unimagined by the designer are discovered by players as they explore the possibility space of the game.

迭代、评估和稳定性

Iteration, Evaluation, and Stability

迭代对于游戏设计来说很重要,但通常也充满挑战。如果你不慢慢来、小心谨慎,很容易迷失在迭代周期中。George Kokoris 表示,他认为“测试和迭代时最重要的事情是减少每个测试用例中的移动部件数量,这样才能更好地识别更改中的因果关系。” 6

Iteration is important in the design of our games but is often challenging. It’s easy to get lost in your iterative cycles if you don’t go slowly and carefully. George Kokoris says he believes that “the most important thing to do when testing and iterating is to reduce the number of moving parts in each test case, the better to identify the cause-effect relationships in your changes.”6

当我们以模块化方式构建时,我们可以在整个项目中定期休息或休息,也许可以暂停并评估项目的进展情况。此外,正如游戏设计师马克·威廉提醒我的那样,我们应该考虑到“在中型和大型工业规模的团队中……模块化工作还允许‘功能团队’分工,并贡献更多专注的努力和不那么艰巨的交付成果。这可以增强主人翁意识,从而增强个人对项目工作和贡献的承诺感和自豪感。”

When we build in a modular way, we can take rests or breaks at regular intervals throughout the project, perhaps to pause and evaluate where the project is at. In addition, as the game designer Marc Wilhelm reminded me, we should consider that “on medium and especially large, industrial-scale teams working modularly also allows for ‘feature teams’ to divide up work and contribute more focused efforts and less daunting deliverables. This can increase a sense of ownership and therefore (a sense of) commitment and pride in an individual’s work and contribution to a project.”

为了最有效地工作,我们需要让游戏中的所有内容都准备好,并能够在项目的每个阶段进行评估,无论这种评估是在我们的工作室进行的日常游戏测试、与公众成员进行的正式游戏测试,还是向我们项目的利益相关者和财务支持者进行的演示。为了能够评估我们游戏的任何模块,每个子模块都必须稳定且运行良好。这非常符合敏捷开发的做事方式。正如游戏开发者和制作人 Alan Dang 所说,“通过能够在每个阶段进行评估,您可以实施更改或更改优先级,以帮助改善游戏,并使其符合每个人的愿景。” 7

In order to work most effectively, we need to have everything in our game ready and able to be evaluated at every stage of the project, whether that evaluation is a daily playtest in our studio, a formal playtest with members of the public, or a presentation to our project’s stakeholders and financial backers. For us to be able to evaluate any module of our game, every submodule has to be stable and working healthily. This is very much in line with the agile development way of doing things. As game developer and producer Alan Dang says, “By being able to evaluate at every stage, you can implement changes or change priorities to help make the game better, and make it come into line with everyone’s vision.”7

同心发展帮助我们管理时间

Concentric Development Helps Us Manage Our Time

采用同心、模块化的方式构建可以帮助我们更好地掌握项目的整体时间流逝。在到达 alpha 或 beta 里程碑时,游戏设计师经常面临的挑战是必须将游戏的各个模块协调为一个完整、连贯的整体,因为他们在全面制作期间已经缩小了项目范围。对于大多数项目来说,重新确定范围是不可避免的——我们最终都会用尽时间,不得不从游戏中删减一些内容。

Building in a concentric, modular way can help us get a better handle on the overall passage of time for our project. Arriving at the alpha or beta milestones, game designers often face a challenge in having to reconcile the modules of their game into a complete, coherent whole, having scoped their project down during full production. Rescoping is an inevitability for most projects—we all eventually run out of time and have to cut something from the game.

对于每个聪明的开发者来说,最大的问题是:我什么时候会意识到时间不多了?我还有时间回应我的意识到的问题吗?集中精力工作将帮助你更快地意识到事情还没有完成,时间不多了。虽然钟表匠可能无法放弃手表的子模块,但游戏的可塑性非常强(在易于塑造或铸造的意义上)。如果我们发现实现游戏的基本功能意外地占用了整个项目时间表的一半,我们仍然有时间以一种聪明的方式思考我们将在整个游戏中包含或排除什么,以及我们如何转移设计重点以在最后将所有东西整合在一起。

The big questions for every smart developer are: When will I realize that I’m running out of time? Will I have time left to respond to my realization? Working concentrically will help you realize sooner when things haven’t come together and that time is running out. While a watchmaker might not be able to ditch a submodule of their watch, games are remarkably plastic (in the sense of being easily shaped or molded). If we discover that implementing the basics of our game unexpectedly ate up half of our overall project timeline, we still have time to think in a smart way about what we’re going to include or exclude in the overall game, and how we might shift the focus of our design to draw everything together at the end.

当我们以同心、模块化的方式构建游戏时,我们能够更早、更清楚地看到游戏中的某个模块何时无法正常工作,从而支持我在第 11 章中提到的快速原型设计信条:“早失败、快速失败、经常失败”。如果我们以模块的方式思考,而不仅仅是以相互关联的整体的方式思考,那么我们就能尽早摆脱失败或不太重要的东西。这与皮克斯导演安德鲁·斯坦顿(《玩具总动员》《虫虫危机》《海底总动员》)的想法一致,艾德·卡特穆尔和艾米·华莱士在关于皮克斯流程的书《创造力公司》中对此进行了描述。

When we build in a concentric, modular way, we are able to see earlier and more clearly when a particular module of our game isn’t working, supporting the rapid prototyping credo that I mentioned in chapter 11: “Fail early, fail fast, fail often.” If we think in terms of modules, not just in terms of the interconnected whole, then we’re better able to ditch stuff that’s failing, or that isn’t so important, as early as possible. This lines up with a thought from Pixar director Andrew Stanton (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Finding Nemo), which Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace describe in their book about Pixar’s process, Creativity Inc.

安德鲁喜欢说,人们需要尽可能快地犯错。在战斗中,如果你面对两座山,而你不确定要攻击哪一座,他说,正确的做法是赶紧选择。如果你发现这是错误的山,就转身攻击另一座。在这种情况下,唯一不可接受的做法是在山丘之间奔跑。8

Andrew is fond of saying that people need to be wrong as fast as they can. In a battle, if you’re faced with two hills and you’re unsure which one to attack, he says, the right course of action is to hurry up and choose. If you find out it’s the wrong hill, turn around and attack the other one. In that scenario, the only unacceptable course of action is running between the hills.8

即使我们“攻错了山头”,最终不得不放弃一些工作,同心开发也能确保我们以富有成效的方式完成工作,发现有关我们项目的事实,而不是毫无成效地摆弄一些没有教会我们任何东西的东西。

Even if we “attack the wrong hill,” and end up having to throw away some work, concentric development ensures that we’ve done so in a productive way, uncovering facts about our project, rather than unproductively noodling on something that didn’t teach us anything.

转向同心发展

The Switch to Concentric Development

在构思过程中,我们通常以一种粗糙、快速和粗糙的方式工作,将原型拼凑在一起,作为我们的想法的工作示例。我们的游戏。记住,我强调过,在构思过程中,我们不会制作游戏的小型演示:我们只是在测试个人想法。

During ideation, we usually work in a rough-and-tumble, quick-and-dirty way, slapping together prototypes to stand up working examples of the ideas that we have for our game. Remember, I stressed that during ideation we’re not making a little demo of our game: we’re just testing individual ideas.

然而,在本书描述的趣味制作过程中——当构思阶段完成,预制作阶段开始时——我们转向同心开发,这可能是一个艰难的转变。它要求我们几乎在一夜之间改变我们的思维方式和实际方法。

However, in the playful production process described in this book—when the ideation phase is complete and the preproduction phase begins—we switch to concentric development, and it can be a tough transition to make. It requires us to change both our mindset and our practical approach almost overnight.

我们可以做的一件事是,让我们在构思结束时构建的最后几个原型更加精致。这通常是自然而然发生的。我们的一个构思原型通常比其他原型更成功。完善该原型(并可能从其他成功的原型中引入元素)可以非常顺利地过渡到在垂直切片上集中工作。

One thing we can do to ease the transition is to make the last few prototypes that we build toward the end of ideation a little more polished. This often happens quite naturally. One of our ideation prototypes will usually have been more successful than the others. Polishing that prototype (and maybe bringing in elements from other successful prototypes) can provide a very smooth transition to working concentrically on a vertical slice.

同心发展与垂直切片

Concentric Development and the Vertical Slice

我希望您现在可以清楚地看到同心开发如何支持我们在预制作结束时(垂直切片到期时)的整体进度。如果我们以这种方式工作,我们始终会拥有一款具有完整(或接近完整)功能的游戏,该游戏始终可玩,外观和声音都很棒,并且我们可以轻松地进行游戏测试。

I hope that you can now see clearly how concentric development supports our overall progress toward the end of the preproduction, when the vertical slice is due. If we work in this way, we always have a game made up of complete (or nearly complete) features, that is always playable, that looks and sounds great, and that we can easily playtest.

如果我们到了计划完成垂直切片的日期,而我们所有的机械装置仍处于半组装状态,外观和声音都还未完成,而且运转不佳,那么我们就错过了里程碑,只能苦苦挣扎着从一片狼藉中做出好东西。如果我们齐心协力,那么当我们到达垂直切片的截止日期时,我们设法制造的所有东西都将运转良好,并将为我们进入全面生产奠定坚实的基础。

If we get to the date by which we had planned to complete the vertical slice, and all of our mechanics are still half-assembled, unfinished in terms of their looks and sound, and not working well, then we miss the milestone and are left struggling to make something good out of a broken mess. If we work concentrically, everything that we’ve managed to make when we get to the date that the vertical slice is due will be working well, and will give us a solid foundation to work with as we move into full production.

这正是我们创作前三部《神秘海域》游戏的方式。我们开始构建一个垂直切片,从一份我们想要实现的功能列表开始。有些功能很快就完成了,有些功能则比我们预期的花费了更多时间。在预制作结束时,由于时间不足,我们不得不将一些想法搁置一旁。但由于我们齐心协力,我们构建的所有东西都汇集在一起​​,为我们打造一款好游戏奠定了基础。我们没有采用的想法进入了我们的脑海,并经常被用于我们的下一个项目。

This is very much the way that we created the first three Uncharted games. We started to build a vertical slice, beginning with a list of features that we wanted to implement. Some came together quickly, and some took more time than we’d expected. At the end of preproduction, we had to leave some of our ideas by the wayside, for want of time. But because we worked concentrically, everything that we did build came together, giving us the basis for a good game. The ideas that we didn’t use went into our mental back pocket and often made their way into our next project.

通过这种方式,同心开发可以避免我们在最后匆忙完成所有事情的压力。压力越小,我们团队的开发人员的身心健康状况就越好,也意味着我们的游戏最终发布时更有可能达到优异的质量。

In this way, concentric development prevents us from having to go through the stressful process of rushing everything together at the very end. Less stress means better physical and mental health for the developers on our team, and it also means that our game is much more likely to be of excellent quality when it finally ships.

同心开发不仅在预生产期间有用。它在整个生产过程中(预生产之后的下一个项目阶段)都很有价值,并将在我们朝着 alpha 里程碑(游戏“功能完整”)和 beta 里程碑(游戏“内容完整”)前进时提供支持。我们将在后面的章节中详细讨论这些里程碑。

Concentric development isn’t just useful during preproduction. It’s valuable throughout full production, the next project phase after preproduction, and will support us as we progress toward the alpha milestone, when the game is “feature complete,” and the beta milestone, when it’s “content complete.” We’ll talk more about these milestones in later chapters.

同心开发和敏捷

Concentric Development and Agile

2002 年,当我与 John Spinale 交谈时,同心圆开发在游戏开发圈还是一个激进的想法。也许是因为快速原型制作的传统——“随便拼凑起来,让它发挥作用,让它保持粗糙和未完成的状态!”(这种理念在我们的构思阶段很有价值),人们很难理解在预制作开始时转向这种方法的价值。

Concentric development was a radical idea in game development circles when I had my conversation with John Spinale in 2002. Perhaps because of the legacy of rapid prototyping—“slap it together, just make it function, leave it rough and unfinished!”—(a philosophy that is valuable during our ideation phase) it was hard for people to understand the value of shifting to this approach at the beginning of preproduction.

然而,虽然这种方法并不总是被称为同心开发(许多人以这种方式工作,但没有给他们所做的事情起名字),但越来越多的开发人员正在使用它,而且自从 Mark Cerny 方法和敏捷等开发方法兴起以来,它得到了更广泛的采用。

However, though the approach isn’t always called concentric development (many people work this way without having a name for what they’re doing), it’s used by increasing numbers of developers, and it’s become much more widely adopted since the rise of development approaches like Mark Cerny’s Method and Agile.

您可能已经对敏捷软件开发有所了解,因为世界各地的许多游戏和软件开发人员都在使用这种开发方法。与方法一样,敏捷开发是对软件构建“瀑布”方法所体现的流水线理念的进步反应。它通过其他流程出现,例如 20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代的快速应用程序开发和 90 年代的合理统一流程。9敏捷是一种软件开发方法,其中正在构建的软件的设计(以及如何最佳地构建软件的决策)通过开发团队和项目利益相关者之间的协作随着时间的推移而发展。

You might already know something about Agile software development, since it’s used by many game and software developers around the world. Like Method, agile development was a progressive reaction to the assembly-line ideas embodied in the “waterfall” approach to building software. It emerged via other processes like rapid application development in the 1970s and 1980s, and the rational unified process in the 1990s.9 Agile is an approach to software development in which the design of the software being built—and the decisions about how best to build it—evolve over time through a collaboration between the development team and the project stakeholders.

敏捷是一种有效且富有创意的软件开发方法。“它提倡适应性规划、渐进式开发、早期交付和持续改进,并鼓励快速灵活地应对变化。” 10正如《敏捷软件开发宣言》中总结的那样,敏捷强调:

Agile is an effective, creative way to approach software development. “It advocates adaptive planning, evolutionary development, early delivery, and continual improvement, and it encourages rapid and flexible response to change.”10 As summarized in “The Manifesto for Agile Software Development,” Agile emphasizes:

个体和互动高于流程和工具

可用的软件胜过详尽的文档

客户协作优先于合同谈判

响应变化而非遵循计划11

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan11

敏捷开发人员的经验法则可以用比敏捷更古老的一句话来概括:“将变化视为机遇,而不是危机。”

A rule of thumb for Agile developers is summarized by a saying older than Agile: “Treat change as an opportunity, rather than a crisis.”

模块化是敏捷哲学的一部分,团队会挑选最重要的功能和内容模块,并在冲刺期间以专注的方式对其进行处理,然后根据做得好和做得不好的地方停下来重新评估项目的总体进程。

Modularity is built into the philosophy of Agile, as teams pick the most important modules of functionality and content and work on them in a focused way during a sprint, before stopping and reevaluating the overall course of the project in light of the things that did and didn’t turn out well.

最大化未完成的工作量

Maximizing the Amount of Work Not Done

同心开发迫使你不断讨论游戏设计中最重要的事情,就像你今天在屏幕上看到的一样——这是一种非常敏捷的观点。这不仅有助于你的项目改进,而且可以最大限度地减少你可能进行的不受控制的过度工作,并帮助你运行一个更无压力的项目。正如我在南加州大学游戏项目的同事、交互设计师和教育家玛格丽特·莫泽所说,“这种频繁重新审视优先事项的方式是你最大限度地减少未完成工作量的方法(我最喜欢的敏捷原则)。” 12

Concentric development forces you to have an ongoing discussion about what’s most important to the design of your game, as you see it on your screen today—a very Agile outlook. This not only helps your project improve but it minimizes the amount of uncontrolled overwork you might otherwise do and helps you run a more stress-free project. As my colleague in the USC Games program, interaction designer and educator Margaret Moser, says, “This frequent revisiting of priorities is how you maximize the amount of work not done (my favorite Agile principle).”12

玛格丽特在这里描述的是敏捷宣言背后的十二项原则之一,即“简单——最大化未完成工作量的艺术——至关重要”。这个“未完成的工作”概念很棘手。难道我们不想最大化我们实际完成的工作量吗?这里所说的是,我们应该专注于那些已被证明能为我们的项目目标(尤其是我们的体验目标)带来帮助的东西。我们还应该意识到,哪些东西对我们的项目目标没有任何帮助。如果它没有增加任何东西,我们就不应该去做它。这是敏捷的一个方面,我们可以总结为“更聪明地工作,而不是更努力地工作”。

What Margaret is describing here comes from one of the twelve principles behind the Agile manifesto, namely, “Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done—is essential.” This concept of “the work not done” is a tricky one. Don’t we want to maximize the amount of work that we actually do? What is being said here is that we should keep a focus on what has been shown to add something to our game in terms of our project goals, our experience goal in particular. We should also remain aware of when something is not adding anything that contributes toward our project goals. If it’s not adding anything, we shouldn’t work on it. This is an aspect of Agile that we could summarize as “work smarter, not harder.”

定期参考你的项目目标和体验目标可以帮助你最大限度地完成你没有完成的任务,因为你意识到你不需要做这些任务——它们对你想要创造的体验没有贡献。通过牢记我们的体验目标并定期测试我们的游戏,我们有一个很好的基础来评估每个功能或内容,一旦它进入游戏,我们就可以决定是保留还是放弃它。

Referring to your project goals and experience goal regularly helps you to maximize the number of tasks that you didn’t work on, because you realize you don’t need to do them—they don’t contribute to the kind of experience you’re trying to create. By keeping our experience goal in mind and playtesting our game regularly, we have a good basis for evaluating each feature or piece of content as soon as it goes into the game, and for deciding if we should keep it or ditch it.

最大限度地减少不必要的“未完成工作”可以清除不必要的任务,并帮助您集中精力休息以准备第二天的工作,或与朋友、伴侣或孩子共度时光。您花在过上快乐、充实、有联系的生活上的时间——以及由此产生的良好身心健康——也是您整体游戏设计实践的重要组成部分。

Maximizing the amount of unnecessary “work not done” should clear your decks of unneeded tasks and can help you focus on getting rested for the next day’s work, or spending time with your friends, partner, or children. The time that you spend in leading a happy, fulfilling, connected life—and the good physical and mental health that results—is also an important part of your overall game design practice.

同心发展的步伐

The Pace of Concentric Development

当你以同心方式工作时,你必须走得慢一些,一开始可能会感到沮丧。你正在对无聊的主要机制进行大量细致的工作,而你真正想开始尝试令人兴奋的次要机制。主要机制是如此基础——它们肯定会起作用!

When you’re working concentrically, you have to go somewhat slowly, and it might feel frustrating at first. You’re doing a lot of detailed work on the boring primary mechanics, while you really want to start playing with the exciting secondary mechanics. The primary mechanics are so basic—surely they’re going to work!

然而,这种强制的缓慢通常(也许是违反直觉的)会给我们一种紧迫感,让我们尽快完成主要机制,包括细节和所有内容,这样我们才能接触到其他机制中那些通常很有趣的部分我们的游戏。正因为如此,当你全神贯注地工作时,你不太可能浪费时间在主要机制的无关紧要的方面,而更有可能花费适当的时间来完善它们。

However, this enforced slowness usually (and perhaps counterintuitively) gives us more of a sense of urgency to get the primary mechanics finished, details and all, so that we can get to those other mechanics that are usually the interesting and fun parts of our game. Because of this, when you’re working concentrically, you’re less likely to waste time noodling on insignificant aspects of your primary mechanics and are more likely to spend the right amount of time on making them good.

如果你在团队中工作,同心开发和模块化构建将需要在沟通和信息共享方面付出额外的努力,以便你和你的队友可以评估你正在做的事情,决定谁将负责下一步的任务,并讨论阻碍你取得进展的任何障碍。这种对沟通的重视是敏捷开发的一部分,包括站立会议等实践,我们将在第 22 章中讨论。持续讨论你的游戏制作过程也很重要。有时,这不仅仅是关于你的游戏结果如何;而是关于你的过程结果如何。正如 Alan Dang 提醒我的那样,“能够讨论最佳实践或开发、提高效率的方法等,是敏捷的核心原则的一部分。”

If you’re working in a team, concentric development and modular building will require some extra effort in communication and information sharing, so that you and your teammates can evaluate what you’re making, decide who will do which task next, and discuss any blockages that are preventing you from making progress. This emphasis on communication is built into agile development, with practices like the stand-up meeting, which we’ll discuss in chapter 22. It’s also important to discuss your game-making process on an ongoing basis. Sometimes it’s not just about how your game is turning out; it’s about how your process is turning out. As Alan Dang reminded me, “Being able to discuss best practices or development, ways to be efficient, etc., are part of the core principles of Agile.”

您可能已经意识到,同心开发及其所包含的持续范围界定过程可能要求您在开发过程中重新协商合同,以更改其细节以反映项目的新范围。如果您与发行商达成协议,您将提供一些功能列表,然后意识到您无法提供所有功能,那么您可能会陷入困境。幸运的是,部分得益于敏捷的兴起,聪明的游戏发行商越来越意识到,与具有许多功能但设计上存在缺陷、不完善和杂乱无章的游戏相比,具有较少创新、集成、可玩机制的精致游戏更具娱乐性(并且销量更好)。我希望您的发行商具有这种进步的态度,您应该尝试在合同中建立一定程度的灵活性。如果您在这方面遇到困难,您应该寻求高级项目管理和合同建议。

You’ve probably realized that concentric development, and the process of ongoing scoping that it entails, might demand that you renegotiate a contract partway through development, to change its details to reflect the new scope of your project. If you’d agreed with a publisher that you’d deliver some list of features, and then realize that you can’t deliver them all, you might be in hot water. Fortunately, and partly thanks to the rise of Agile, smart game publishers are increasingly realizing that a polished game with a shorter list of innovative, integrated, playable mechanics is more entertaining (and sells better) than a game that has lots of features but is buggy, unpolished, and all over the place in terms of its design. I hope that your publisher has this kind of progressive attitude, and you should try to build some reasonable degree of flexibility into your contracts. If you get into difficulty around this, you should seek out advanced project management and contract advice.

您可以将同心式开发用于任何类型的项目,无论项目规模大小、开发周期是几年还是几个小时。当您只有固定的时间来制作内容时,这种方法效果很好,当您的项目时间表是开放式时,这种方法效果也很好。如果您使用这种方法,几乎​​可以保证您的开发过程得到更好的控制,并在更少的压力下制作出更高质量的游戏和互动媒体,并带来更多创新。

You can use concentric development for any kind of project, large or small, years-long or hours-long. It works well when you only have a fixed amount of time to make what you’re making, and it also works well when your project timeline is open-ended. If you use it, it’s almost guaranteed to bring your development process under better control, and to lead to games and interactive media of higher quality and more innovation made under less stress.

  1. 1. Herbert A. Simon,《人工智能科学》(马萨诸塞州剑桥:麻省理工学院出版社,1969 年出版),Donella H. Meadows 在《系统思考:入门》中转述,Richard Lemarchand 转述;Meadows 和 Wright在《系统思考:入门》中转述,第 83 页。

  2. 1.  Herbert A. Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969), paraphrased by Donella H. Meadows in Thinking in Systems: A Primer, and by Richard Lemarchand; Meadows and Wright, Thinking in Systems: A Primer, 83.

  3. 2. “巫师的智慧:‘木讷主义’”,ESPN,2010 年 6 月 4 日,https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/news/story ?id=5249709 。

  4. 2.  “The Wizard’s Wisdom: ‘Woodenisms,’” ESPN, June 4, 2010, https://www.espn.com/mens-college-basketball/news/story?id=5249709.

  5. 3. Daniel Ostroff,《细节不是细节》,Eames Office,2014 年 9 月 8 日,https://www.eamesoffice.com/blog/the-details-are-not-the-details/

  6. 3.  Daniel Ostroff, “The Details Are Not the Details,” Eames Office, September 8, 2014, https://www.eamesoffice.com/blog/the-details-are-not-the-details/.

  7. 4. Sellers,《高级游戏设计》,42。

  8. 4.  Sellers, Advanced Game Design, 42.

  9. 5. Sellers,《高级游戏设计》,43,引用 Fuller 和 Appleton,《协同学》,3。

  10. 5.  Sellers, Advanced Game Design, 43, quoting Fuller and Appleton, Synergetics, 3.

  11. 6.私密通讯。

  12. 6.  Private communication.

  13. 7.私人通信。

  14. 7.  Private communication.

  15. 8. Catmull 和 Wallace,《创造力公司》,97 页。

  16. 8.  Catmull and Wallace, Creativity, Inc., 97.

  17. 9. “快速应用程序开发”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_application_development;“Rational Unified Process”,维基百科,https: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_Unified_Process

  18. 9.  “Rapid Application Development,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_application_development; “Rational Unified Process,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_Unified_Process.

  19. 10. “敏捷软件开发”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

  20. 10.  “Agile Software Development,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development.

  21. 11. Ken Schwaber 等人,“敏捷软件开发宣言”,2001 年,https://agilemanifesto.org/

  22. 11.  Ken Schwaber et al., “Manifesto for Agile Software Development,” 2001, https://agilemanifesto.org/.

  23. 12.私人通信。

  24. 12.  Private communication.

 

 

14 预生产交付成果——垂直切片

14    Preproduction Deliverable—The Vertical Slice

让我们来谈谈垂直切片作为可交付成果。(请记住,可交付成果是开发人员在开发过程中必须提供的东西。)垂直切片是项目预生产阶段结束时应交付的三个主要可交付成果之一,另外两个是游戏设计宏和时间表。综合起来,垂直切片和游戏设计宏将使我们能够为项目的整个生产阶段制定时间表。在我们有趣的生产过程中,直到我们有了垂直切片,我们才能真正说我们已经离开了预生产阶段。

Let’s talk about the vertical slice as a deliverable. (Remember, a deliverable is something that must be provided by the developers as part of a development process.) The vertical slice is one of three major deliverables that are due at the end of the preproduction phase of the project, the other two being a game design macro and a schedule. Taken together, the vertical slice and the game design macro will allow us to construct a schedule for the full production phase of the project. In our playful production process, we can’t truly be said to have left preproduction until we have a vertical slice.

交付垂直切片的构建

Delivering a Build of the Vertical Slice

我们通过创建版本来交付垂直切片(参见第 5 章)。交付时,垂直切片应该相对没有重大错误和其他技术问题:我们对垂直切片的完善应该超越我们的游戏设计和制作价值,延伸到游戏的稳定性。没有人可以期望垂直切片完全没有错误,但如果它在向重要的合作者或利益相关者演示时反复崩溃,那就太尴尬了。这意味着我们在处理垂直切片时要抽出时间来保持代码健康并正常运行,这与我们刚刚讨论的同心开发一致。

We deliver the vertical slice by creating a build (see chapter 5). When delivered, the vertical slice should be relatively free of major bugs and other technical problems: the polish that we give the vertical slice should extend beyond our game design and production values to the stability of the game. No one can expect a vertical slice to be perfectly bug-free, but it would be embarrassing to have it crash repeatedly during a demo to an important group of collaborators or stakeholders. That means making time as we work on the vertical slice to keep the code healthy and working well, which is in line with the concentric development that we just discussed.

任何游戏未使用但存在于项目文件夹中的多余资产都应从构建中排除,以尽量减少构建的大小。这有时很难实现,并且可能需要学习引擎的新技术方面,但在垂直切片到期时这样做是很好的,有助于我们进入以优化为导向的思维模式,这是良好游戏制作过程的特征。这也意味着在项目结束时要学习的东西会少一点,此时最小化构建的大小将非常重要。

Any superfluous assets not used by the game but present in the project folder should be excluded from the build, to minimize its size. This is sometimes a pain to achieve and can involve learning new technical aspects of one’s engine, but it is good to do this by the time the vertical slice is due, to help get us into the kind of optimization-oriented mindset that characterizes good game-making process. It also means there’s one less thing to learn toward the end of the project, when minimizing the size of the build will be very important.

用其他材料支撑垂直切片

Supporting the Vertical Slice with Other Materials

如果你使用同心开发创建了垂直切片,那么可能不需要花很长时间就能玩完,这没关系。质量比数量更重要。通常很难创建一个理想的垂直切片,其中游戏的所有核心元素都呈现、可玩且精致。无论是由于游戏设计范围还是时间不够,您都可以使用其他材料(如概念图、电影和文档)来支持垂直切片。将它们与垂直切片一起以精美包装的形式提供,以便于理解它们如何代表垂直切片中缺少的基本内容。这将是专业精神的锻炼 — 您希望清晰地沟通并给人留下良好的印象。

If you’ve created your vertical slice using concentric development, it might not take long to play through, and that’s okay. Quality matters more than quantity. It’s often difficult to create an ideal vertical slice where all of the core elements of the game are present, playable, and polished. Whether it’s because of the scope of your game’s design or because you just ran out of time, you can support your vertical slice with other materials like concept art, movies, and documentation. Deliver them alongside the vertical slice in a nicely presented package, so that it’s easy to understand how they represent the essential things that are missing from your vertical slice. This will be an exercise in professionalism—you want to communicate clearly and make a good impression.

从创建垂直切片开始了解范围

Learning about Scope from the Creation of the Vertical Slice

明智的做法是不要忽视我们在预生产过程中了解到的关于构建产品所需时间的信息。尝试在有时间限制的预生产阶段构建游戏核心(参见第 11 章)为我们提供了第一次重要的机会来审视项目的范围。我们计划为我们的游戏总体投入多少资金?根据我们刚刚了解到的需要多少次迭代才能达到我们满意的质量水平,这是否现实?现在是否已经是时候从设计中删减一些内容,并专注于使用游戏的核心元素以创新的新方式实现我们的项目目标了?在接下来的几章中,我们将研究如何制定一个切实可行的计划,以便在我们拥有的时间内构建一款游戏。

It’s wise not to ignore what we learn during preproduction about how long it takes us to build things. Attempting to build the core of our game in a timeboxed preproduction phase (see chapter 11) gives us our first major opportunity to look at the scope of our project. How much are we planning to make overall for our game? Is that realistic, based on what we’ve just learned about how many iterations it takes us to get to a level of quality that we’re happy with? Is it already time to cut some things from the design and focus on using our game’s core elements to realize our project goals in innovative new ways? In the next few chapters, we’ll look at how to make a realistic plan for a game we can build in the time we have for full production.

测试垂直切片

Playtesting the Vertical Slice

一旦我们完成了垂直切片,就该进行游戏测试了。使用我在第 12 章中列出的指导方针和技术,与至少 7 个人一起进行游戏测试。根据您对游戏环节和离职面谈的观察做笔记,从游戏测试中获取所有信息。评估反馈并在此基础上迭代您的设计。

Once we’ve delivered the vertical slice, it’s time to playtest it. Run a playtest with at least seven individuals, using the guidelines and techniques that I lay out in chapter 12. Capture all the information that you can from the playtest by taking notes based on your observations of the play sessions and the exit interviews. Evaluate the feedback and iterate on your design from there.

重点测试我们的游戏标题和早期关键艺术

Focus Testing Our Game’s Title and Early Key Art

预制作阶段的结束是进行更多工作的好时机,我们可以利用这个机会来弄清楚如何与游戏的潜在受众建立联系。我们可以通过进行焦点测试来研究什么可能是我们游戏的好标题,并就第一幅关键艺术作品的原型获得一些反馈。(关键艺术作品是一张单一图像,它传达了有关您的游戏的大量信息,并用于营销。)如果您想这样做,您可以在本书的网站 playfulproductionprocess.com 上找到详细说明。

The end of preproduction is a good time to do some more work in figuring out how we might connect with the potential audience for our game. We can do this simply by running a focus test to research what might be a good title for our game and get some feedback on a prototype for the first piece of key art. (Key art is a single image that conveys a lot of information about your game and is used in marketing.) If you’d like to do this, you can find detailed instructions on this book’s website, playfulproductionprocess.com.

干得好!您已经交付了(或者正在交付)垂直切片,这是定义游戏设计最重要的事情之一。在下一章中,我们将暂时停止讨论预生产结束时应交付的可交付成果,讨论大多数游戏开发者在其职业生涯中某个阶段都会遇到的一个严重问题:加班问题。

Well done! You’ve delivered—or are well on your way to delivering—a vertical slice, which is one of the most important things you can make to define the design of your game. In the next chapter, we will take a break from our discussion of the deliverables due at the end of preproduction, to talk about a serious issue that most game developers will encounter at some point in their careers: the problem of crunch.

 

 

15 反对紧缩

15    Against Crunch

您可能知道,游戏开发者在项目期间会使用“加班”这个词,他们加班是为了达到一个重要的里程碑或完成一个项目。他们经常工作到深夜,每周可能工作六七天。有时人们只打算加班几周,但最终却连续加班了几个月甚至几年。

Crunch, as you probably know, is the term that game developers use for a time during a project when they’re working extra-long hours to hit a major milestone or to finish a project. They will often work late into the night and might work six or seven days a week. Sometimes people set out to crunch for only a few weeks but end up doing it for months or even years at a time.

我并不以此为荣,但我在游戏行业工作期间曾参加过多次加班,亲眼目睹了加班带来的危害。长期加班对个人、团队和组织的健康非常有害。它会损害游戏开发者的身心健康,导致团队士气低落、沟通不畅,最终分裂。从长远来看,它会摧毁工作室和公司。

I’m not proud of it, but I took part in a number of crunches during my time in the game industry, and I saw firsthand the toll that crunch can take. Extended crunch is very harmful to the health of individuals, teams, and organizations. It can damage both the physical and mental health of game developers, it can cause teams to lose morale, stop communicating, and eventually split up. It can, in the long term, destroy studios and companies.

现在,请不要误会我的意思:我喜欢努力工作,而且我相信,为了让大多数事情变得出色,一定程度的额外努力是必要的。但是,为了完成任务或达到高质量标准而努力工作的健康时期与游戏行业加班的那种不受控制的过度工作之间是有区别的。我相信加班通常是游戏设计过程不顺利的症状,本书旨在帮助游戏开发者最大限度地减少他们不受控制的过度工作,同时最大限度地提高游戏的卓越性。

Now, don’t get me wrong: I like to work hard, and I believe that some amount of extra-hard work is needed to make most anything excellent. But there’s a difference between a healthy period of pushing oneself harder in order to get things done or to hit a high bar of quality, and the kind of uncontrolled overwork that characterizes game industry crunch. It’s my belief that crunch is often a symptom of a game design process that isn’t working well, and this book is designed to help game developers minimize the amount of uncontrolled overwork they do, while maximizing the excellence of their game.

管理游戏范围,在有趣的制作过程中使用项目阶段和里程碑,可以部分解决加班问题,在接下来的两章中,我们将介绍如何使用游戏设计宏来规划好项目。另一个部分解决方案是我们在项目进展过程中对工作的态度,这就是我们在本章中要讨论的内容。

Managing the scope of our game, using the project phases and milestones in our playful production process, gives us a partial solution to the problem of crunch, and in the next two chapters we’ll look at using a thing called a game design macro to plan a project well. Another partial solution is the attitude to our work that we hold as we progress through the project, and that’s what we’ll discuss in this chapter.

在开始一个项目时,我们中的许多人都怀着良好的意愿,这意味着要把所有的精力投入到正常一周的全部时间中,无论是全职员工的四十个小时左右,还是学生在一个大型课堂项目上投入的十几个小时。我们专注于充分利用我们的时间,但出于这样或那样的原因,也许是因为在项目开始时我们有一种无限时间的错觉,我们开始放松下来,不再专注于让每一个小时都富有成效。此外,当我们将要构建的东西还有这么多未知数时,很难感受到项目的紧迫性。

At the start of a project, many of us set out with good intentions, meaning to put all our energy into the full hours of a normal week, whether that’s the forty or so hours of a full-time employee, or the dozen hours that a student might put into a major class project. We focus on getting the most out of our time, but for one reason or another, perhaps because of the illusion of infinite time that we have at the start of a project, the temptation is to start to take it easy, and we become less focused on making every hour productive. Also, it’s hard to feel the urgency of a project when so much about what we’re going to build is still unknown.

然后,在项目进行到一半左右的时候,我们进入了业内所谓的“哦,该死!”时刻(图 15.1)。这时我们意识到,现在留给项目的剩余时间比过去少了。我们开始更加努力地工作。

Then, somewhere around halfway through the project, we reach what is known in the trade as the “oh, shit!” moment (figure 15.1). This is the point when we realize that we now have less time remaining for the project than has passed. We start to work harder.

图 15.1

Figure 15.1

尝试开发许多典型的游戏项目。

Attempted developer effort for many typical game projects.

而且,如果我们是充满热情但缺乏经验的游戏开发者,并且不确定如何掌控我们的项目,我们就会不断加班加点,拼命争取时间将所有计划中的功能和内容融入游戏。很快我们就会加班加点,夜以继日地工作到午夜,周末也是如此。

And, if we’re passionate but inexperienced game developers, and we’re not sure how to bring our project under control, we keep working harder and harder, desperately trying to claw back the time we need to get all our planned features and content into the game. Soon we’re crunching hard, working until midnight night after night and on the weekends too.

我们可能还能坚持一段时间。但研究表明,工作时间延长会导致我们的生产力迅速下降,正如鲍勃·沙利文在 CNBC 的一篇文章中所描述的那样:“员工产出在每周工作 50 小时后急剧下降,在 55 小时后更是跌至谷底——以至于工作 70 小时的人在这额外的 15 小时内没有产生任何产出。” 1

We can probably keep this up for a little while. But research shows that our productivity falls off rapidly when working extended hours, as described in a CNBC article by Bob Sullivan: “Employee output falls sharply after a 50-hour work-week, and falls off a cliff after 55 hours—so much so that someone who puts in 70 hours produces nothing more with those extra 15 hours.”1

睡眠不足会使情况变得更糟。疲劳的人认知能力受损:他们无法找到解决问题的方法,会犯需要花费时间才能解决的错误,还会被与项目大局无关的事情分散注意力。在《哈佛商业评论》的一篇优秀文章中莎拉·格林·卡迈克尔引用研究称:“我们大多数人比我们想象的更容易疲劳。只有 1-3% 的人每晚可以睡五六个小时而不会出现表现下降。此外,每 100 个认为自己是这个不眠精英的人中,实际上只有 5 个是。” 2

Losing sleep makes things worse. People who are tired are cognitively impaired: they can’t find solutions to the problems they face, they make mistakes that take time to fix, and they get distracted by things that are inconsequential in the big picture of the project. In an excellent article in the Harvard Business Review, Sarah Green Carmichael quotes research in saying, “Most of us tire more easily than we think we do. Only 1–3% of the population can sleep five or six hours a night without suffering some performance drop-off. Moreover, for every 100 people who think they’re a member of this sleepless elite, only five actually are.”2

因此,当一个加班的人试图努力工作时,他们的努力很快就会适得其反。在短暂的生产力高峰之后,大多数人的实际成就会下降到低于他们保持正常工作时间所能达到的水平(图 15.2)。

So, while a crunching person is attempting to work hard, pretty soon their efforts become self-defeating. After a brief spike of productivity, most people’s actual accomplishment falls to below where it would have been if they’d just kept working regular hours (figure 15.2).

图 15.2

Figure 15.2

许多典型游戏项目的实际开发人员成就。

Actual developer accomplishment for many typical game projects.

有一种更好的工作方式。如果我们确保从项目一开始就保持努力,并逐渐增加努力,以便在中间阶段工作最努力,而不是在最后阶段全力以赴,那么我们就可以开始掌控工作。如果这个项目对我们来说很特别,我们可能会选择比在正常工作情况下更努力地工作。但如果我们计划得当,我们可能永远不需要比正常努力程度的 125% 左右更努力地工作,也不会因为每周工作时间超过 55 小时而导致生产力下降。

There’s a better way of working. If we make sure that we keep up our effort from the beginning of the project, and gradually ramp it up so that we’re working hardest in the middle, instead of trying to go flat-out at the end, then we can start to bring the work under our control. If the project is special to us, we may choose to work harder than we would under regular working circumstances. But if we plan things right, we might never have to work harder than around 125 percent of normal effort and won’t fall off the productivity cliff of the fifty-five-hour-plus workweek.

如果我们控制项目范围,我们就可以开始对抗加班带来的危害。这需要自律,而且游戏制作的现实情况也使加班变得复杂,但即使只是将其作为目标,也可以对团队和个人的健康有所帮助。我强烈地感觉到,以可控、持续的方式比平时更努力地工作,比在项目的后半段投入大量精力,可以提高整体生产力。也许这就像兔子和乌龟的寓言:稳扎稳打才能赢得比赛。

If we bring the scope of our project under control, we can start to combat the damage that crunch does. It takes self-discipline and is complicated by the realities of game-making, but even just setting this as a goal can be helpful to the health of teams and individuals. I feel strongly that working a little harder than normal in a controlled, sustained way leads to greater overall productivity than trying to expend a huge burst of effort in the second half of a project. Maybe it’s like the fable of the hare and the tortoise: slow and steady wins the race.

此外,如果我们在项目的前半段不松懈,在项目的中间阶段尽全力工作,并在项目结束时逐渐减少工作量,那么我们在尝试发布游戏时就不会完全筋疲力尽。发布一款游戏需要大量极其困难、复杂的工作,包括解决设计问题、修复错误和克服技术挑战。我们需要在项目结束时保持相对精力充沛和充分休息。

In addition, if we don’t slack off in the first half of the project, work as hard as we’re ever going to work in the middle third of the project, and gradually ramp our effort back down again toward the end, then we won’t be totally shattered as we try to ship our game. Shipping a game takes a huge amount of extraordinarily difficult, complicated work in solving design problems, fixing bugs, and overcoming technical challenges. We need to arrive at the end of the project relatively fresh and well rested.

因此,图 15.3显示了理想的路径。但在实践中,这并不容易实现——很难克服拖延的诱惑。在图 15.4中,你可以看到我们许多人在项目展开时可能会采取的路径。当里程碑临近时,我们自然会加大努力,而当里程碑过去时,我们需要休息一下。

So, figure 15.3 shows the ideal path. It’s not easy to pull off in practice—it’s hard to overcome the temptations of procrastination. In figure 15.4, you can see the path that many of us will probably take as the project unfolds. It’s natural to increase our effort as a milestone approaches and to need a rest when a milestone is passed.

图 15.3

Figure 15.3

对于开发人员来说,这是一种更省力、更省力的方法。

A better way for developers to expend any extra effort.

图 15.4

Figure 15.4

开发人员在尝试以更健康的方式工作时可能的努力路径,与有趣的生产过程的主要里程碑相关。

The probable effort path for developers, as they try to work in a healthier way, in relation to the major milestones of the playful production process.

我希望你会同意,“可能的努力”路径上所表现出的努力(只会增加到合理的额外强度)要比我们大多数人认为的加班导致的巨大努力和随之而来的倦怠要好。

I hope you’ll agree that the effort shown on the “probable effort” path, which only rises to a reasonable amount of extra intensity, is better than the flame-out of huge attempted effort and consequent burnout that most of us associate with crunch.

总之,在整个构思过程中逐渐增加努力,以良好的势头进入预生产阶段,并保持冷静但切实的紧迫感。尽量坚持到 alpha 里程碑。之后,如果一切顺利,并且您仍然能够控制项目范围,那么您可以在达到每个里程碑时分阶段减少努力。虽然我不能保证您能轻松越过终点线,但您应该还有精力完成、提交和推广您的游戏。

In summary, gradually increase effort throughout ideation, enter preproduction with good momentum, and maintain a calm but tangible sense of urgency. Try to keep it up through to the alpha milestone. After that, if everything goes well, and if you remain in control of your project’s scope, you may be able to bring your effort down in stages as you reach each milestone. While I can’t promise that you’ll coast across the finish line, you should have energy left to finish, submit, and promote your game.

尽管我们在过去十年中取得了巨大进步,但游戏行业仍然存在着一个棘手的问题——加班。加班带来的兴奋和刺激,以及最终做出令人惊叹的作品的喜悦,使它非常容易上瘾。就像任何上瘾一样,它会带来可怕的代价:对身心健康产生负面影响、亲密关系紧张、父母无法陪伴孩子度过人生中的重要时刻,最终导致人们离开游戏行业,带走他们来之不易的智慧和专业知识。

Even though we’ve made great improvements over the last ten years, the game industry still has a difficult problem with crunch. The adrenaline and excitement of crunch, and the joy of making something amazing at the end, makes it very addictive. Just like any addiction, it comes with a terrible cost of negative effects on physical and mental health, strained intimate relationships, parents not being present for important moments in their children’s lives, and, ultimately, people leaving the game industry, taking with them all their hard-won wisdom and expertise.

加班有多种形式,大多数都是有害的。最糟糕的是“目标不断变化”的问题,即项目的最终里程碑一再推迟。这种项目管理策略——给项目更多时间当你意识到并非所有事情都能完成时,这是你试图完成一个项目的自然反应。问题在于我们的团队成员根本无法控制自己的节奏。我们努力工作以达到里程碑,但里程碑却越来越远,我们更加努力地试图达到它。如果它再次被推迟,我们就会陷入疲惫和努力的循环中。我们的疲惫导致我们犯下越来越多的错误和糟糕的决定,最终进一步拖慢项目进度。这是一个恶性循环,也是游戏行业大量紧缩的根源。

Crunch comes in many forms, most of them damaging. Among the worst is the problem of “moving goalposts,” when the final milestone of a project gets repeatedly postponed. This kind of project management strategy—of giving a project more time when it’s clear that not everything will get done—is a natural response when you’re trying to finish a project. Trouble comes with the fact that our team members simply can’t pace themselves. We work hard to hit the milestone, which then gets moved further away, and we work even harder to try to hit it. If it gets moved again, we become trapped in a cycle of exhaustion and effort. Our tiredness leads us to make increasing numbers of mistakes and bad decisions, ultimately slowing the project down even further. It’s a vicious cycle, and one that underlies a lot of game industry crunch.

但希望还是有的。我们可以通过使用时间限制以及在开发过程中尽早并经常检查项目范围来克服目标变动的问题。正如 Alan Dang 提醒我的那样,我们必须承认我们对项目所需时间的估计是错误的,并尽早重新确定范围。本书中描述的技术和方法旨在帮助我们避免各种形式的紧缩,敏捷方法也服务于同样的目标。

But there is cause for hope. We can overcome the problem of moving goalposts by using timeboxing and by checking the scope of our project early and often throughout development. As Alan Dang reminded me, we have to admit when our estimates about how long things would take were wrong, and rescope as early as possible. The techniques and methods described in this book are designed to help us to avoid crunch in all its forms, and Agile methodologies serve the same goal.

我想承认,如果处于特权地位,比如我一生中因性别、种族和社会经济背景而享有的特权,那么反对加班或拒绝涉及加班的工作生活方式就更容易了。处于边缘地位的人往往必须付出双倍的努力才能获得与拥有不劳而获特权的人相同的回报。这就是为什么我认为自己有责任公开谈论加班问题并努力做出一些改变。

I want to acknowledge that it’s easier to argue against crunch or reject a working lifestyle that involves crunch when coming from a position of privilege, like the privilege that I’ve enjoyed throughout my life because of my gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. People who are marginalized often have to work twice as hard to receive the same rewards as someone with unearned privilege. That’s why I see it as my duty to speak out about crunch and try to effect some change.

加班问题并不只存在于游戏行业。科技行业、娱乐行业、其他行业、医药行业和政府部门都存在这种问题。也许解决加班问题的最佳方式就是从哲学角度思考我们的生活。我们想要什么?什么让我们快乐?什么让我们健康?我们如何才能造福世界(和我们自己)而不造成伤害?

Crunch is not a problem confined to the game industry. You’ll find it across the tech industry and the entertainment industry, in other industries, in medicine, and in government. Perhaps the best way for us to approach the problem of crunch is to think philosophically about our lives. What do we want? What makes us happy? What makes us healthy? How can we benefit the world (and ourselves) without doing harm?

我认为,万事万物之间的平衡很重要。虽然通常需要努力工作才能创作出优秀的艺术作品,但如果我们的艺术要有意义,我们也需要借鉴多样化的生活经验。工作赋予了我的生活意义,但我的生活不仅仅是工作。致力于在生活中找到正确的平衡这样你就可以努力工作而不加班加点,实现卓越而不伤害自己或周围的人。

I believe that balance in all things is important, and that while hard work is usually needed to make excellent art, we also need a diversity of life experience to draw on, if our art is to have meaning. Work has given my life great meaning, but there’s more to my life than work. Devote yourself to finding the right balance in your life, so that you can work hard without crunching, and achieve excellence without harming yourself or those around you.

我从事游戏行业时,加班问题最为严重。但随着人们开始讨论这个问题并想出解决办法,情况开始好转。你可以与队友、同行和朋友讨论这个问题,并采用更好、更可持续的开发实践,这样既不会让人精疲力竭,又能制作出优秀的游戏,从而为减少加班做出贡献。

I was around in the game industry when the problem of crunch was at its worst. And I’ve seen things start to get better, as people simply began to discuss the problem and to figure out how to address it. You can contribute to a future with less crunch by talking about it with your teammates, your professional peers, and your friends, and by adopting better and more sustainable development practices that don’t burn people out, but that still lead to great games.

  1. 1.鲍勃·沙利文,“致工作狂人的备忘录:长时间工作会降低你的工作效率”,CNBC,2015 年 1 月 26 日,https: //www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/working-more-than-50-hours-makes-you-less-productive.html 。

  2. 1.  Bob Sullivan, “Memo to Work Martyrs: Long Hours Make You Less Productive,” CNBC, January 26, 2015, https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/working-more-than-50-hours-makes-you-less-productive.html.

  3. 2. Sarah Green Carmichael,“研究结果表明:长时间工作对个人和公司都会产生不利影响”,《哈佛商业评论》,2015 年 8 月 19 日,https: //hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for-people-and-for-companies 。

  4. 2.  Sarah Green Carmichael, “The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies,” Harvard Business Review, August 19, 2015, https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for-people-and-for-companies.

 

 

游戏设计师的 16 个故事结构

16    Story Structure for Game Designers

讲故事是对变化的研究。

—Irving Belateche 1

Storytelling is the study of change.

—Irving Belateche1

我对游戏和故事之间的关系非常着迷。在我的职业生涯中,我主要选择制作讲故事的游戏,比如《神秘海域》《噬魂者》。我从未真正遇到过我不喜欢的讲故事或游戏形式,当我在 1991 年加入游戏行业时,我对游戏设计作为一种新兴艺术形式的兴奋部分集中在互动讲故事的可能性和前景上,从《猴岛的秘密》的现实到《星际迷航》全息甲板的幻想。

I’m fascinated by the relationship between games and stories. In my career, I chose mostly to work on storytelling games, like Uncharted and Soul Reaver. I never really met a form of storytelling or play that I didn’t like, and when I joined the game industry in 1991, part of my excitement about game design as an emerging art form was focused on the possibility and promise of interactive storytelling, from the reality of The Secret of Monkey Island to the fantasy of the Star Trek holodeck.

并非每款游戏都有或都需要故事。但如果你承认我们的大脑通过讲述故事来理解世界,那么大多数游戏都有某种叙事形式或弧线。即使有些事件似乎是随机的,我们也会从心理上将事件排列成因果序列。从这个角度来看,一轮国际象棋和一场篮球比赛都具有叙事性。

Not every game has or needs a story. But most games have some kind of narrative shape or arc, if you accept that our minds make sense of the world by telling stories about it. We mentally order events into sequences of cause and effect, even when some of the events seem random. Looked at in this light, a round of chess and a basketball game both have a narrative aspect.

在接下来的章节中,我们将讨论使用游戏设计宏规划游戏设计的过程。考虑游戏的叙事形式是进行规划的有效方法,因此在本章中,我们将介绍一些故事结构基础知识,以期协调我们对故事和游戏的看法。

In the following chapters, we’re going to discuss the process of planning a game’s design using a game design macro. A consideration of the narrative shape of games is a useful way to get into this planning, so in this chapter we’ll take a look at some story structure fundamentals, with an eye to reconciling our views of story and games.

亚里士多德的 诗论

Aristotle’s Poetics

希腊哲学家亚里士多德生活在公元前 384 年至公元前 322 年。公元前 335 年左右,他撰写了一部关于剧院戏剧表演的论文,名为《诗学》。这是已知最早的戏剧理论著作,在西方世界失传了一千多年,直到 12 世纪西班牙穆斯林哲学家伊本·鲁世德的翻译才将其重新介绍给世人。

The Greek philosopher Aristotle lived from 384 to 322 BCE. Around 335 BCE he wrote a treatise on dramatic performance in the theater called the Poetics. This is the earliest known work of dramatic theory and was lost to the Western world for over a thousand years, being reintroduced thanks to a twelfth-century translation by the Spanish-Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd.

在《诗学》中,亚里士多德写道,故事首先陈述一个立场,然后探索这个立场,然后得出结论,以创造“一个完整而完整的行动的表述”,各部分之间有因果关系。更简单地说,“整体是有开始、中间和结束的东西。” 2

In the Poetics, Aristotle writes that a story first states a position, then explores that position, and then reaches a conclusion, to create “a representation of an action that is whole and entire,” with a cause-and-effect relationship between the parts. Put more simply, “A whole is something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.”2

对于亚里士多德来说,故事中的英雄面临着一些问题,他称之为“结”。他将故事分为两个部分:复杂化和解开。在复杂化阶段,英雄要么了解问题,要么看着问题出现。在解开的一半,英雄试图解决问题,最终得到一些结果。

For Aristotle, the heroes of stories face some problem, which he characterizes as a “knot.” He divides stories into two halves: complication and unraveling. In the complication phase, the hero either learns about the problem or watches the problem appear. In the unraveling half, the hero tries to deal with the problem, leading to some ultimate outcome.

亚里士多德《诗学》的三部分结构与许多当代剧本和小说的三幕结构非常契合。第一幕是故事的开端,通过介绍人物和世界来铺垫故事;第二幕是中间,通常是第一幕的两倍长,向我们展示了故事如何随着情节的展开而变得更加复杂;第三幕是结尾,通常是最短的一幕,展示了故事的高潮和结局。一部两小时的故事片可能采用三幕结构,但一部一小时长的电视连续剧也可能采用三幕结构。即使是一部十分钟的短片也可能采用三幕结构。

The three-part structure of Aristotle’s Poetics fits well onto the three-act structure of many contemporary screenplays and novels. Act one, the beginning, sets up the story by introducing us to the characters and world; act two, the middle, is usually twice as long as act one and shows us how the story becomes more complicated as it unfolds; act three, the end, is often the shortest act and shows the climax and resolution of the story. A two-hour feature film might have a three-act structure, but so might an hour-long episode of a television series. Even a ten-minute short film might be set up in three acts.

这种简单的开头-中间-结尾结构似乎可以直接应用于游戏,无论是我们已经玩了数千年的竞技游戏,还是现代单人数字游戏的叙事“战役”模式(以及介于这两极之间的大多数游戏)。当团队开始或玩家角色开始旅程时,游戏就开始了。随着团队争夺领先地位或玩家角色在旅途中不断前进,游戏在中间部分变得越来越复杂。所有游戏(除非被放弃)都会结束,当时间到并且一支队伍获胜时,或者当玩家角色完成任务时(至少目前如此)。

This simple construction of beginning-middle-end seems directly applicable to games, whether they’re competitive games like those we’ve been playing for thousands of years, or the storytelling “campaign” mode of modern single-player digital games (and most every game between these two poles). A game has a beginning when the teams kick off or the player-character sets out on their journey. Things become increasingly complicated in the middle part of a game, as the teams vie for the lead or the player-character progresses along their journey. All games—unless they’re abandoned—reach an end, when time’s up and one team wins, or when the player-character reaches the end of their quest (for now, at least).

弗赖塔格金字塔

Freytag’s Pyramid

1863 年,德国剧作家兼小说家古斯塔夫·弗赖塔格 (Gustav Freytag) 写了一本名为《戏剧技术》的书,其中提出了五部分戏剧结构理论。戏剧和电影专业的学生对伴随其理论的图表很熟悉,被称为弗赖塔格金字塔(图 16.1)。

In 1863, the German playwright and novelist Gustav Freytag wrote a book called Die Technik des Dramas (Technique of the drama), in which he laid out a theory of a five-part dramatic structure. The diagram that accompanies his theory is familiar to students of drama and cinema and is known as Freytag’s Pyramid (figure 16.1).

图 16.1

Figure 16.1

弗赖塔格金字塔。

Freytag’s Pyramid.

弗赖塔格的理论建立在亚里士多德的三部分结构之上,并为我们提供了额外的工具。对于弗赖塔格来说,一个故事由五个部分组成。

Freytag’s theory builds on Aristotle’s three-part structure and gives us some extra equipment to work with. For Freytag, a story consists of five parts.

  1. 展览或介绍,介绍或设定故事的世界和主要人物。这是确定故事发生的时间和地点,以及故事的情绪或基调的时候。
  2. The exposition or introduction, where the world and the main characters of the story are explained or set up. This is when the time and place of the story are established, along with its mood or tone.
  3. 指向高潮的情节,故事情节的复杂展开就发生在这里。这是故事中非常重要的一部分,因为其中的事件需要有逻辑性,以便精心设置下一部分。
  4. The rising action, where the unfolding complications of the story take place. This is a very important part of the story, because its events need to logically flow so as to carefully set up the next part.
  5. 上升动作达到顶峰高潮,所有的复杂情况都达到了顶点,成为了人物命运发生根本性改变的转折点。
  6. The rising action peaks with a climax, where all of the complications come to a head, providing a turning point where the characters’ fates are fundamentally changed.
  7. 高潮之后是坠落行动,高潮部分的结果就此展开。接下来的情节往往包含最后一刻的悬念,最终结果似乎难以确定。
  8. The climax is followed by the falling action, where the results of the climax are played out. The falling action will often contain one last moment of suspense, where the final outcome seems uncertain.
  9. 最后,我们到达结局或者灾难,我们可以看到故事中的世界如何因故事中的事件而发生持久的变化。角色开始适应这种变化,这导致了宣泄,即情感的释放,释放了观众在故事中积累的所有紧张和焦虑。
  10. Finally, we reach the denouement or catastrophe, where we see how the world of the story has undergone lasting change, because of the events of our tale. The characters begin to get used to this change, and this results in catharsis, an emotional release of all the tension and anxiety that built up in the audience during the story.

和亚里士多德的《诗学》一样,弗赖塔格的五部分结构也符合许多故事的写作和讲述方式。莎士比亚的大多数戏剧都是五幕剧,电视制片人兼剧本编辑约翰·约克在他的著作《走进森林:五幕故事之旅》中认为,五幕分析适用于所有戏剧形式的故事,包括游戏。

Like Aristotle’s Poetics, Freytag’s five-part structure fits with the way that many stories are written and told. Most of Shakespeare’s plays take place in five acts, and in his book Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story the television producer and script editor John Yorke argues that a five-act analysis is useful for stories across all dramatic forms, including games.

游戏结构反映故事结构

Game Structures Mirror Story Structure

亚里士多德和弗赖塔格都强调了开头、中间和结尾的重要性,这是一个很好的切入点,让我们从游戏设计的视角来讨论故事结构。正如艾伦·鲁普顿在她的书《设计就是讲故事》中指出的那样,我们都在自己的生活中认识到了这种基本结构,它不可避免地有开头、中间和结尾。3

This focus that both Aristotle and Freytag have on the importance of a beginning, middle, and end is a good starting point for our discussion of story structure through a game design lens. As Ellen Lupton points out in her book Design Is Storytelling, we all recognize this fundamental structure in our own lives, which inevitably have a beginning, a middle, and an end.3

精心设计的游戏无疑具有戏剧性,有兴奋、兴奋和绝望的时刻,有不断上升的紧张感和宣泄的模式。此外,许多电子游戏都是围绕任务或探索构建的,所有这些任务或探索都必然有开始、中间和结束。在开始时,玩家角色可能会要么从非玩家角色 (NPC) 那里获得明确的任务,要么以带有显眼钥匙孔的锁门的形式获得隐含的任务(用弗雷塔格的话来说,是展示)。玩家(通过玩家角色)进入游戏世界,寻找完成任务的物品或信息;障碍出现,必须克服(上升行动)。

A well-designed game is undeniably dramatic, with moments of excitement, elation, and despair, and with patterns of rising tension and cathartic release. In addition, many videogames are structured around missions or quests, all of which have, by necessity, a beginning, middle, and end. At the beginning, the player-character might receive either an explicit mission from a nonplayer character (NPC), or an implicit mission in the form of a locked door with a conspicuous keyhole (exposition, in Freytag’s terms). The player (via the player-character) sets out into the world of the game, looking for the object or information that will fulfill the mission; obstacles arise, and must be overcome (rising action).

最终,事情会发展到关键时刻:必须打败怪物或解决难题才能获得完成任务所需的东西(高潮)。有时会回到发出任务的 NPC 身边,或回到需要钥匙的门前,事件会继续展开:可能是更多怪物的突然袭击,或挡住道路的落石,需要发现一条新路(坠落动作)。最后,任务完成(结局。NPC 交出一些有价值的小饰品,或门打开,揭示通往新任务的道路。

Eventually, things come to a head: a monster must be defeated or a problem solved in order to gain the thing needed to fulfill the mission (climax). There’s sometimes a journey back to the NPC that issued the quest, or to the door that needed a key, and events continue to unfold: maybe a surprise attack by more monsters or a rockfall that blocks the way, necessitating the discovery of a new path (falling action). Finally, the mission is complete (dénouement). The NPC hands over some valuable trinket, or the door opens, revealing the path forward to a new quest.

故事和游戏玩法都是分形的

Stories and Gameplay Are Fractal

因此,一个故事可以分为三幕或五幕。同样,幕也可以分为序列。弗兰克·丹尼尔 (Frank Daniel) 曾是一名电影导演、制片人、编剧,也是南加州大学电影艺术学院的院长。他因教授“序列结构”编剧方法而闻名,这种方法认为一部电影由八个序列组成:两个序列为第一幕,四个序列为第二幕,两个序列为第三幕。

So, a story can be broken down into three or five acts. Similarly, acts can be broken down into sequences. Frank Daniel was a film director, producer, screenwriter, and a dean of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. He is famous for teaching a “sequence structure” approach to screenwriting, which sees a film as made up of eight sequences: two for the first act, four for the second act, and two for the third act.

保罗·约瑟夫·古利诺(Paul Joseph Gulino)曾师从弗兰克·丹尼尔(Frank Daniel)学习编剧,他在《编剧:序列法》一书中说道:“一部典型的两小时电影由序列组成——8 到 15 分钟的片段,每个片段都有自己的内部结构——实际上,它们是在较长的电影中构建的较短的电影。在很大程度上,每个序列都有自己的主角、紧张感、情节发展和结局——就像整部电影一样。序列和独立的 15 分钟电影之间的区别在于,序列中提出的冲突和问题只能在序列中得到部分解决,而当它们得到解决时,结局通常会引出新的问题,而这些问题又会成为后续序列的主题。” 4或者如特蕾西·富勒顿(Tracy Fullerton)所说:“序列会提出一个戏剧性的问题并给出答案,但并不一定能解决问题。侦探会接手这个案子吗?她会在谋杀现场找到线索吗?” 5

In his book Screenwriting: The Sequence Approach, Paul Joseph Gulino, who learned screenwriting from Frank Daniel, says, “A typical two-hour film is composed of sequences—eight- to fifteen-minute segments that have their own internal structure—in effect, shorter films built inside the larger film. To a significant extent, each sequence has its own protagonist, tension, rising action, and resolution—just like a film as a whole. The difference between a sequence and a stand-alone fifteen-minute film is that the conflicts and issues raised in a sequence are only partially resolved within the sequence, and when they are resolved, the resolution often opens up new issues, which in turn become the subject of subsequent sequences.”4 Or as Tracy Fullerton puts it: “A sequence asks a dramatic question and answers it, but does not necessarily resolve it. Will the detective take the case? Will she find any clues at the murder site?”5

同样,一个序列可以分解成多个场景,每个场景通常发生在不同的地点或关注特定的角色群。与序列一样,场景本身就是一个独立的故事,展示角色在对正在展开的事件和彼此做出反应时所经历的变化。

Similarly, a sequence can be broken down into a number of scenes, each of which usually takes place in a separate location or focuses on a particular constellation of characters. Like a sequence, a scene is its own kind of stand-alone story that shows characters going through changes as they act and react to the unfolding events and to each other.

但场景并不是故事中戏剧动作的最小单位:我们可以将场景分解为多个节拍。节拍是来自戏剧和电影制作,部分与剧情展开的时间有关,但也指事件、决定、发现或只是两个角色之间的交流。节拍推动着故事的进展。

But a scene is not the smallest unit of dramatic action in a story: we can break a scene down into a number of beats. A beat is a concept from the theater and from filmmaking, relating partly to the timing of the unfolding drama, but also referring to an event, a decision, a discovery, or just an exchange between two characters. Beats push a story along on a moment-by-moment basis.

在思考场景和节拍时,思考角色进入和离开场景或节拍时的情绪价会很有用。情绪价是心理学中用来讨论情绪高低的术语。愤怒、悲伤和恐惧等情绪具有负价,而快乐则具有正价。场景或节拍中的角色通常以某种情绪价聚集在一起 - 比如,一个快乐,另一个悲伤 - 然后他们互相反弹,发生情感互动并在此过程中改变他们的情绪价 - 悲伤的人现在快乐,反之亦然。如果一个场景中的角色的情绪价与他们进入时相同,那么这个场景可能不适合故事情节。

It can be useful when thinking about scenes and beats to think about the emotional valences of the characters as they enter and leave the scene or the beat. Emotional valence is a term used in psychology to discuss the up-ness or down-ness of emotions. Emotions like anger, sadness, and fear have negative valence, while joy has a positive valence. A scene or a beat usually has characters come together with certain emotional valences—say, one happy and the other sad—and then they bounce off each other, having an emotional interaction and changing their valences in the process—the one that was sad is now happy and vice versa. If a scene leaves the characters with the same valences they had when they entered it, then perhaps that scene isn’t serving the story.

所以,故事、幕、序列、场景和节奏。显然,亚里士多德和弗赖塔格所描述的整个故事的形状也适用于故事的子部分及其子部分,直至节奏的水平。场景中的每个节拍都有复杂和解开、呼唤和回应的起伏模式。这种起伏的模式让我们时时刻刻都感兴趣,就像我们可能会被炉边闪烁的火焰或岸边的海浪迷住一样。

So, stories, acts, sequences, scenes, and beats. It seems clear that the shapes of whole stories that Aristotle and Freytag describe also apply to the subparts of stories, and their sub-subparts, right down to the level of the beat. Each beat in a scene has a rising and falling pattern of complication and unraveling, of call and response. This undulating pattern keeps us interested from moment to moment and hour to hour, just as we might be transfixed by the flickering flames in a hearth or the waves on the shore.

这样,故事就变成了分形,这是数学中的一个概念,用来描述结构,其部分和子部分的形状与整体结构相似。随着故事中动作的起伏,每个幕、序列、场景和节拍也会起伏不定(图 16.2)。(这个想法可能起源于 20 世纪 90 年代由 Melanie Anne Phillips 和 Chris Huntley 开发的“Dramatica”故事结构模型。)6

In this way, stories are fractal, a concept from mathematics that describes structures whose parts and subparts are similar in shape to the whole structure. As the action rises and falls across the story, so it rises and falls across each act, sequence, scene, and beat (figure 16.2). (This idea probably originates with the “Dramatica” model of story structure developed in the 1990s by Melanie Anne Phillips and Chris Huntley.)6

图 16.2

Figure 16.2

故事片故事的分形结构。

The fractal structure of a feature film story.

只需稍加想象,就能发现游戏的结构也是分形的。我们刚刚研究了游戏任务的结构与弗赖塔格金字塔相同。现在,您可能可以想象整个任务的子部分或子部分中存在相同的上升和下降模式,这让人想起 Jaime Griesemer 在《光晕》中提出的三十秒乐趣概念,我们在第 10 章中讨论过这个概念。

It only takes a small leap of imagination to see that games are fractal in their structure too. We just looked at how a game mission has the same structure as Freytag’s Pyramid. Now you can probably imagine the same rising and falling pattern in a subsection of the whole mission or in a sub-subsection, in a way that is reminiscent of Jaime Griesemer’s concept of the thirty seconds of fun in Halo, which we talked about in chapter 10.

杰米的三十秒乐趣描述了许多不同的个人游戏节奏。进入新关卡并躲在掩体后面。与每个敌人战斗。在掩体之间移动,收集能量提升。这些节奏中的每一个都有起有落,加起来就是游戏各个部分的整体进展,最终是整个游戏的进展。

Jaime’s thirty seconds of fun describes a number of different individual gameplay beats. Enter a new level and hunker down behind cover. Fight each enemy. Work between cover spots, collecting power-ups as we go. Each of these beats rises and falls, adding up to overall progression through each part of the game, and eventually through the whole game.

我们也可以很容易地在竞技游戏和体育运动中看到这种分形模式,这些游戏和体育运动的结构是围绕半场和四分之一场、赛局和比赛、回合和系列赛。我们甚至可以使用分形概念来向上延伸竞技数字游戏和体育运动的“元”:战术、战略和玩家或团队关系的元游戏。纵观故事结构,我们都能发现对我们思考游戏设计很有价值的对应关系。

We can easily see this fractal pattern in competitive games and sports as well, which are structured around halves and quarters, sets and matches, rounds and series. We can even use the fractal concept to reach upward toward the “meta” of competitive digital gaming and of sports: a metagame of tactics, strategies, and player or team relationships. Everywhere we look at story structure, we can find correspondences that are valuable to our thinking about the design of our games.

故事的组成部分

The Components of Story

现在我们已经了解了一些故事结构基础知识,让我们更深入地探讨一下我们所熟知和喜爱的大多数故事的组成部分。

Now that we’ve looked at some story structure basics, let’s take a slightly deeper dive into the components that make up most of the stories we know and love.

大多数故事都有一个主角故事的主人公,从实际和情感的角度看,我们与他的观点非常一致。讲故事的人使用同情和同理心让我们与故事中的主人公产生共鸣,而这些技巧多种多样。电影制作人使用面部表情特写和情感音乐在我们和主角之间建立情感桥梁。小说家经常使用主角的内心声音。游戏设计师可以自由选择如何让我们在情感上接近玩家角色主角,但我们必须努力工作,因为面部特写和内心独白通常很难优雅地融入我们的设计中。许多伟大的故事都有不止一个主角,一些电子游戏也有不止一个玩家角色。

Most stories have a protagonist, the hero of the story, whose viewpoint we are closely aligned with from a practical and emotional standpoint. The storyteller uses techniques of empathy and sympathy to get us to resonate with the hero of the story, and those techniques are many and varied. A filmmaker uses close-ups of facial expression and emotive music to build an emotional bridge between us and the protagonist. A novelist often uses the inner voice of the protagonist. Game designers are free to choose how to bring us emotionally close to player-character protagonists, but we have to work hard at it, since facial close-ups and inner monologues are often hard to incorporate elegantly into our designs. Many great stories have more than one protagonist, and some videogames have more than one player-character.

大多数故事也有一个拮抗剂,也许是敌人,他做了一些事情来提供主张力或者核心冲突这会推动故事的发展。许多游戏让玩家对抗必须击败的敌人,但核心冲突不一定来自人类或怪物;它可能是世界上的一种事态,比如与时间的赛跑。主要紧张局势可以对故事和游戏玩法产生非常积极的影响,集中玩家的注意力并营造兴奋感。

Most stories also have an antagonist, perhaps an enemy, who does something to provide the main tension or core conflict that will drive the story. Many games pit the player against enemies that must be defeated, but the core conflict need not come from people or monsters; it could be a state of affairs in the world, like a race against time. The main tension can have a very positive impact on both story and gameplay, focusing the player’s mind and building excitement.

冲突与叙事的关系可能是一个热门话题。作家 Ursula K. Le Guin 写道:“现代主义写作手册经常将故事与冲突混为一谈。这种简化主义反映了一种文化,这种文化在培养对其他行为选择的无知的同时,还助长了侵略性和竞争性。……冲突是一种行为。在任何人的生活里,还有其他同样重要的行为,例如联系、寻找、失去、承受、发现、离别、改变。” 7这份行为列表对于任何寻求探索游戏玩法新领域的游戏设计师来说都是一份礼物。

Conflict’s relationship to storytelling can be a hot-button topic. The author Ursula K. Le Guin wrote, “Modernist manuals of writing often conflate story with conflict. This reductionism reflects a culture that inflates aggression and competition while cultivating ignorance of other behavioral options. Conflict is one kind of behavior. There are others, equally important in any human life, such as relating, finding, losing, bearing, discovering, parting, changing.”7 This list of behaviors is a gift to any game designer seeking to explore new frontiers of gameplay.

我同意人们过分强调了冲突在故事叙述中的作用,并因此产生了负担。但我也相信,如果想在故事叙述中淡化冲突,那么要想吸引观众的注意力,就必须非常努力地用其他方式引起观众的兴趣。

I agree that conflict’s role in storytelling has been overemphasized and brings baggage with it. But I also believe that people who want to deemphasize conflict in their storytelling have to work very hard to create interest in other ways if they’re going to hold their audience’s attention.

故事的主线通常由主人公渴望的某样东西提供,有些讲故事的人称之为外在欲望主角为了得到那个东西所采取的步骤,与他们生活的大背景相对照。人生的梦想,推动他们完成故事,让他们接触到构成故事主体的有趣人物和场景。在努力实现目标的过程中,主人公通常会与一些难以看到或难以命名的东西作斗争,这些与他们的性格、局限性和个人成长有关。一些讲故事的人称这是内在欲望需要,以及主人公如何处理这种隐藏的欲望、成长、克服某些事情、成为一个新人的方式,往往蕴含着故事的真正意义。

The through line of a story is often provided by something that the protagonist longs for, which some storytellers term an external desire or a want. The steps that the protagonist takes to get that thing, set against the greater context of their life’s dream, propels them through the story, bringing them into contact with the interesting characters and scenarios that will make up the body of the story. In the course of trying to achieve their goal, the protagonist usually struggles with something harder to see or to name, something to do with their character, their limitations, and their personal growth. Some storytellers call this an internal desire or a need, and the ways in which the protagonist deals with this hidden desire, to grow, to get past something, to become someone new, often contain the true meaning of the story.

故事的第一部分通常是主人公在家里,周围是现状无论是平凡的世界,对他们来说。然后发生了一些事情,开始推动他们进入故事:这就是所谓的煽动事件主角一开始可能会抗拒,但最终他们还是踏上了旅行让他们遇到新奇或具有挑战性的情况,人物,他们以我们觉得有趣的方式经历和联系。当然,他们在这段旅程中试图实现他们的外在欲望,但随着他们的前进,他们的内在欲望以各种方式受到考验或激活,将他们的旅程引向新的、有趣的方向。讲故事的人会使用以下技巧铺垫为接下来的事情做好准备,植物和收益引导我们继续讲述这个故事。他们会使用逆转让我们感到惊讶,揭示满足我们。他们可能偶尔使用红鲱鱼转移我们的注意力或麦高芬创造故事的动力和连续性。

The first part of the story usually sees the protagonist at home, amid the status quo of whatever is the ordinary world, for them. Then something happens that begins to propel them into the story: this is known as the inciting incident. The protagonist might resist at first, but eventually they embark on a journey that sees them encounter novel or challenging situations and characters, which they move through and relate to in ways that we find interesting to see or hear about. They’re on this journey trying to get to their external desire, of course, but as they move along, their internal desire is tested or activated in various ways, diverting their journey in new and interesting directions. The storyteller will use techniques like foreshadowing to prime us for what’s to come, and plants and payoffs to string us along through the story. They’ll use reversals to surprise us and reveals to satisfy us. They might occasionally use red herrings to divert our attention or a MacGuffin to create story impetus and continuity.

在许多故事中,主角的处境最终会达到危机。似乎一切都失去了;主角的外在欲望永远无法实现。但往往主角的个人成长与其内在欲望的关系在此刻被推到了前台,他们的行为引起了高潮到达目的地。我们看到一切都在这个极具戏剧性的紧张时刻到来,并发现事情将如何发展。主角旅程的最终结果在解决因为它影响着人们的生活和他们所居住的世界。

In many stories, the protagonist’s situation eventually reaches a crisis. It seems like all is lost; the protagonist’s external desire can never be attained. But often the protagonist’s personal growth in relation to their inner desire is pushed to the fore in this moment, and their actions cause a climax to be reached. We see everything come to a head at this point of great dramatic intensity and discover how things will play out. The final result of the protagonist’s journey is shown in the resolution, as it affects the people in their lives and the world they live in.

这个关于故事结构的简短总结使用了来自不同来源的术语,其中许多术语我要感谢我的同事 Irving Belateche 和 Jack Epps Jr.。 您可以阅读和使用多种故事结构方法。其中最著名的可能就是英雄之旅,由 Joseph Campbell 在他的《千面英雄》一书中首创,并由 Christopher Vogler 的《作家之旅:作家的神话结构》推广。英雄之旅是游戏设计师很好的入门故事结构,因为它可以轻松映射到我们许多游戏的任务型结构上。请注意,对英雄之旅的不当使用可能会导致故事陈词滥调,充斥着任何“救世主神话”都会带来的问题。在正确的使用下,它也可以创造出伟大的艺术作品,比如 thatgamecompany 的《旅程》

This brief summary of story structure uses terms from a variety of sources, and I’m indebted to my colleagues Irving Belateche and Jack Epps Jr. for many of them. There are many approaches to story structure that you can read about and use. Perhaps the most famous of them is the hero’s journey, originated by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces and popularized by Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. The hero’s journey is a good starter story structure for game designers, since it maps easily onto the quest-based structure of many of our games. Be warned that inexpert use of the hero’s journey can lead to clichéd and hackneyed stories, rife with the problems that any “savior myth” smuggles on board. In the right hands, it can also lead to great artworks, like thatgamecompany’s Journey.

Blake Snyder 的《救猫咪!》是一本不错的故事结构入门指南,而 Jack Epps 的《剧本写作就是重写:专业修订的艺术和技巧》一书将教会你很多关于优秀写作的迭代性质的知识。通过自己的研究,你可以发现更多关于故事结构和写作的优秀书籍。要了解不同故事结构专家使用的众多术语,请参阅 Ingrid Sundberg 的《情节结构》,你可以在网上找到,其中包含一个图表,清楚地显示了用于指代我上面描述的元素的许多不同名称及其来源。8

Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat! is a good beginner’s guide to structuring stories, and Jack Epps’s book Screenwriting Is Rewriting: The Art and Craft of Professional Revision will teach you a lot about the iterative nature of good writing. You can discover many more excellent books on story structure and writing through your own research. To see the very many terms used by different story structure experts, refer to Ingrid Sundberg’s “Arch Plot Structure” which you can find online, and which includes a diagram clearly showing the many different names used to refer to the elements I’ve described above, along with their sources.8

你可能会感到怀疑,想知道我们从哪里得到了这套讲故事的基本原则。许多伟大的讲故事者并不关心故事结构的讨论。他们只是坐下来开始写作,依靠他们以清晰有趣的方式描述人物和事件的能力,让我们对想象中的人物产生感受,让我们笑或哭,并让我们全神贯注于他们展开的故事。

You might feel skeptical and wonder where we get this set of storytelling fundamentals from. Many great storytellers don’t care for discussions of story structure. They just sit down and start writing, relying on their abilities to describe people and events in a clear and interesting way, to get us to feel things for imaginary people, to make us laugh or cry, and to keep us riveted to their unfolding tale.

但对于游戏设计师来说,我认为,如果我们要成功地协调游戏玩法和故事的起伏能量,我们需要对故事结构有一些基本的了解。我上面描述的组件为你自己的游戏设计和讲故事实践提供了一个起点。像每个讲故事的人一样,你可以自由地挑选、混合和搭配,尝试新事物。如果你遵循这种久经考验的模式,你可能会更快地提高你的讲故事技巧,或者也许你会发现一些你还未考虑过的令人惊叹的新方法,来让你的玩家着迷。

But for game designers, it’s my belief that we need some basic understanding of the structures of story if we are to line up the rising and falling energies of gameplay and story in a successful way. The components that I’ve described above offer a jumping-off point for your own game design and storytelling practice. Like every storyteller, you are free to pick and choose, to mix and match, to try new things. You may advance in your storytelling craft more quickly if you follow this tried-and-tested pattern, or maybe you’ll find amazing new ways of holding your players spellbound that have not yet been considered.

如何改善游戏中的故事

How to Improve the Stories in Your Games

有整本书专门介绍游戏的叙事技巧和叙事设计,你当然应该努力磨练自己作为作家、叙事者和叙事设计师的技能。然而,短期内改善游戏故事的最佳方法非常简单:与作家合作。

There are whole books dedicated to the craft of storytelling and the narrative design of games, and you should certainly strive to hone your own skills as a writer, storyteller, and narrative designer. However, the best thing that you can do in the short term to improve the stories in your games is very simple: collaborate with a writer.

除非你有成功的创意写作经历,否则不要像许多游戏设计师(包括我)那样自以为是,在没有专家帮助的情况下尝试编写游戏。写好文章非常困难。它需要心理治疗师的洞察力、社会学家的细节导向、诗人的抒情和脱口秀喜剧演员的笑话写作能力。无论你住在世界的哪个地方,你身边都有可能不只有一位伟大的作家,而是一群伟大的作家——这些人对对话很敏感(根据我的经验,对话是最难写的)、热爱电子游戏,每月都要付房租。

Unless you have a history of successful creative writing, don’t make the mistake of hubris that many game designers (including me) have made, and try to write your game without expert help. Writing well is incredibly difficult. It requires the insight of a psychotherapist, the detail-orientation of a sociologist, the lyricism of a poet, and the joke-writing ability of a stand-up comic. The chances are that, wherever you live in the world, you’re within a mile or ten of not just one great writer but a whole community of them—people with a good ear for dialogue (one of the hardest things to write, in my experience), a love of videogames, and monthly rent to pay.

过去很难找到了解游戏设计或能够学习了解游戏设计的作家。如今,这两件事都容易多了,因为我们中的许多人都是玩电子游戏长大的,并且热爱电子游戏。你应该花一些时间与你的作家合作,帮助他们了解你的特定游戏是如何运作的,它的需求是什么,以及他们如何融入你的创作过程。但通常,这种时间的投入不仅在伟大的角色、情节和对话方面获得了回报,而且还产生了全新的游戏设计理念。

It used to be hard to find writers who understand game design or could learn to understand it. Nowadays, both things are much easier because so many of us have grown up playing and loving videogames. You should expect to spend some time working with your writer to help them understand how your particular game works, what its needs are, and how they can fit into your creative process. But usually that investment of time pays dividends not only in terms of great characters, plot, and dialogue but also yielding fresh new game design ideas.

尽早找到你的作家——最好是在项目开始时。作家在设计团队中的地位越高,融入到整个设计过程中的程度越高,对团队中的每个人和最终的游戏来说,一切都会越好。将故事改编到现有游戏设计上的游戏很少能取得好成绩。话虽如此,如果你在开发后期才找到作家,也不要惊慌。优秀的作家可以创造奇迹,而仅仅为了完善游戏对话而进行的“改进”就可以完全改变游戏。

Find your writer very early—ideally, at the beginning of your project. The more that a writer is embedded in the design team and integrated into the overall design process, the better everything will be for everyone on the team and for the resulting game. Games that have story retrofitted onto a preexisting game design only occasionally turn out well. That said, don’t panic if you only find your writer late in development. Great writers can work magic, and a “punch up pass” just to polish a game’s dialogue can be completely transformative.

在整个开发过程中,您都应该与作家合作。有时他们会非常忙,有时他们几乎无事可做。根据您正在开发的游戏类型,作家的工作可能在项目完成之前很久就结束了。但根据我的游戏开发经验,在整个开发过程中,新的写作工作一直都在出现,包括环境叙述(关卡中海报或广告牌上的文字,或游戏内物体上的文字)、界面设计(收藏品的名称和描述性“风味文字”)以及游戏之外但与玩家体验相关的材料,例如开发博客文章和社交媒体帖子、广告文案和预告片画外音对话。

You should expect to work with your writer or writers throughout the entire development process. There will be times when they are very busy, and other times when there is little for them to do. Depending on the type of game that you’re developing, there may come a time well before the project is complete when the writer’s work is finished. But in my game development experience, new writing jobs appear all the time throughout development, in environmental narrative (the text on a poster or billboard in a level, or the writing on an in-game object), in interface design (the names and descriptive “flavor text” of collectible objects), and in materials outside of the game but related to the player’s experience, like development blog entries and social media posts, advertising copy, and trailer voiceover dialogue.

也许最重要的是,你的游戏编剧应该有权做出创造性的决定。如果游戏编剧在团队中没有影响力,那么他的明智决定就会被其他人践踏,从而导致游戏玩法和故事无法很好地融合在一起。游戏总监应该支持编剧——不是盲目或无条件的,而是以一种让团队中的每个人都知道他们的工作值得尊重的方式,因为它从根本上影响了玩家的体验。

Perhaps most importantly, your game’s writer should be empowered to make creative decisions. A game writer who isn’t invested with some clout on a team will always have their wise decisions stomped on by others, which leads to a game where gameplay and story don’t hang together well. The game’s director should support the writer—not blindly or unconditionally, but in a way that lets everyone on the team know that their work is to be respected, because it impacts the player’s experience in a fundamental way.

有疑问时

When in Doubt

讲故事是一项复杂的工作。有些人将一生奉献给这项事业。作为一名游戏设计师,你可能对故事一点也不感兴趣,这没关系。游戏设计是一种极其广泛的文化形式,并不是每款游戏都需要故事。

Storytelling is a complicated business. Some people devote their whole lives to its craft. As a game designer, you might not be at all interested in story, and that’s fine. Game design is a vastly expansive cultural form, and not every game needs a story.

然而,我坚持我的观点,即我们的大脑在大部分的正常运作中,通过创造叙事来理解我们的生活。即使一款游戏没有故事,它也肯定有某种叙事。国际象棋没有故事,但骑士的形状像马这一事实是一个叙事元素,两个玩家或两个团队之间的推拉也具有叙事形状。

However, I stand by my thought that our minds, in much of their regular functioning, make sense of our lives by creating narratives. Even if a game doesn’t have a story, it certainly has some kind of narrative. Chess doesn’t have a story, but the fact that a knight is shaped like a horse is a narrative element, and the push and pull between two players or two teams has a narrative shape.

因此,在考虑游戏的叙事结构时,请参考亚里士多德,如果有疑问,请为您的游戏(及其每个部分)提供一个好的开头、好的中间部分和好的结尾。这听起来可能很明显,但您会惊讶地发现,我玩过的许多游戏(以及我制作的一些游戏)的故事开头和中间部分都很棒,但结尾却很差劲。您不太可能制作出比赛有开头和中间但没有结尾的竞技游戏(尽管这听起来像是实验性游戏设计的绝佳提示),因此请对您的叙事游戏表现出同样的尊重。

So, when considering the narrative structure of your game, look to Aristotle, and when in doubt, just give your game (and every part of it) a good beginning, a good middle, and a good end. This might sound obvious, but you’d be amazed at how many games I play (and some that I’ve made) whose stories have a great beginning and middle, but a weak ending. You’d be unlikely to create a competitive game whose matches had a beginning and middle but no end (even though that sounds like a great prompt for a piece of experimental game design), so show the same respect to your storytelling games.

这并不是说伟大的故事必须有一个圆满的结局。故事中的开放式结局,即让观众自己得出最终结果的结论,可以和封闭式结局一样有趣和令人满意,封闭式结局对结果没有任何疑问。只要确保以符合之前内容并尊重玩家给予的时间的方式结束游戏即可。

That’s not to say that great stories must have a tidy ending that resolves completely. Open endings in stories, where the audience is left to draw their own conclusions about what ultimately happens, can be just as interesting and satisfying as closed endings, where there is no doubt as to the outcome. Just make sure to close your game in a way that fits what came before and respects the time that your audience of players has given you.

在下一章中,我们将了解如何使用一种称为游戏设计宏的轻量级游戏设计文档来规划游戏玩法和故事的起伏模式。然后,我们可以使用此宏来安排游戏的创作,该阶段称为全面制作。

In the next chapter, we’ll look at how we can plan the rising and falling patterns of gameplay and story using a kind of lightweight game design document called a game design macro. We can then use this macro to schedule the creation of the game in the phase of our process called full production.

  1. 1. Irving Belateche,《电影剧本分析:回到未来》,课堂讲座,南加州大学电影艺术学院约翰·威尔斯影视写作系,洛杉矶,2018 年 6 月 11 日。

  2. 1.  Irving Belateche, “Film Script Analysis: Back to the Future,” class lecture, John Wells Division of Writing for Screen & Television, USC School of Cinematic Arts, Los Angeles, June 11, 2018.

  3. 2.亚里士多德,《诗学》,26。

  4. 2.  Aristotle, Poetics, 26.

  5. 3. Lupton,《设计就是讲故事》,21页。

  6. 3.  Lupton, Design Is Storytelling, 21.

  7. 4 . 古利诺,《剧本创作》,2。

  8. 4.  Gulino, Screenwriting, 2.

  9. 5.私人通信,2020年5月25日。

  10. 5.  Private communication, May 25, 2020.

  11. 6.菲利普斯和亨特利,《Dramatica》

  12. 6.  Phillips and Huntley, Dramatica.

  13. 7 . 勒奎恩,《Steering the Craft》,146页。

  14. 7.  Le Guin, Steering the Craft, 146.

  15. 8. Ingrid Sundberg,“什么是拱形图和经典设计?”,2013 年 6 月 5 日,https://ingridsundberg.com/2013/06/05/what-is-arch-plot-and-classic-design/

  16. 8.  Ingrid Sundberg, “What Is Arch Plot and Classic Design?,” June 5, 2013, https://ingridsundberg.com/2013/06/05/what-is-arch-plot-and-classic-design/.

 

 

17 预生产交付成果——游戏设计宏

17    Preproduction Deliverable—The Game Design Macro

游戏设计文档是游戏设计计划的记录。在游戏行业的早期,人们非常重视游戏设计文档,将其作为游戏设计的来源。在团队其他成员完成大量游戏开发工作之前,游戏设计师会花时间编写大量的游戏设计文档。几乎没有人会阅读这些纸质文档,一旦游戏的实际情况在开发过程中显现出来,它们最终就会被扔掉。如今,游戏设计通常与垂直切片的创建同步进行,设计师在设计过程中只创建足够的文档。这种方法效果要好得多。

A game design document is a record of the planned design of a game. In the early days of the game industry, great emphasis was placed on the game design document as the source of a game’s design. Game designers spent time writing huge game design documents before much game development work had been done by the rest of the team. Hardly anyone read these slabs of paper, and they would eventually get thrown out once the realities of the game revealed themselves during development. These days, games are generally designed in tandem with the creation of a vertical slice, with designers creating just enough documentation as they go along. This works much better.

游戏设计文档必要且重要的。特别是在预制作期间,我们确实需要为接下来的项目阶段制定计划:全面制作。挑战在于创建一个包含足够细节但又不太多的游戏设计文档。在本章中,我们将了解 Mark Cerny 对游戏设计宏的概念,以及设计师如何使用它来掌握游戏的范围。

Game design documentation is necessary and important. In particular, during preproduction we do need to make a plan for the project phase that comes next: full production. The challenge is to create a game design document that has just enough detail but not too much. In this chapter, we’ll look at Mark Cerny’s conception of the game design macro and how it can be used by designers to get a handle on the scope of their games.

制作全面生产的地图

Making a Map for Full Production

我明智地从一张地图开始,并使故事适合。……另一种方式是让人陷入混乱和不可能之中。

—JRR 托尔金,《JRR 托尔金书信选集》,177。

I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit. The other way about lands one in confusions and impossibilities.

—J. R. R. Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien: A Selection, 177.

托尔金在创作《指环王》时,首先绘制了中土世界的地图,这是他史诗般的奇幻故事的背景,地图上“对距离的刻画十分细致”。1归还魔戒的故事取决于人、动物、物体和信息在这片土地上移动的速度。托尔金在开始写作之前绘制了地图,因此能够确定故事的一个关键方面——距离——并创作出复杂且结构严谨的故事。

Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings by first devising a map of Middle Earth, the setting for his epic fantasy, with “meticulous care for distances.”1 The story of the quest to return the One Ring to Mordor hinges on how quickly people, animals, objects, and information can move across the land. By setting a map into place before he began writing, Tolkien was able to be certain about a crucial aspect of his tale—distance—and was able to create his complex and highly structured story.

想象一下整个不列颠群岛的概览图。你可以看到大城市和较大的城镇、一些山脉和森林、高速公路和主要道路——但你看不到大本钟、爱丁堡城堡或我长大的北格洛斯特郡的小镇。然而,你可以使用这样的地图规划穿越英国的旅程,并且可以在旅途中了解旅行的细节。

Consider an overview map of the whole British Isles. You can see the big cities and larger towns, some mountains and forests, and the motorways and major roads—but you can’t see Big Ben, or Edinburgh Castle, or the little town in north Gloucestershire where I grew up. However, you can plan a journey across Britain using a map like this, and you can figure out the details of your travels as you go along.

游戏设计宏是这样的:它是我们游戏设计的概览图,我们可以使用它来指导整个制作过程。使用游戏设计宏,我们可以找到实现出色、精致、完成的游戏目标的最佳途径。它将帮助引导我们的创造力,并防止我们走弯路。

The game design macro is like this: it’s an overview map of our game’s design that we can use to navigate through full production. Using a game design macro, we can find the best path to our goal of an excellent, polished, finished game. It will help guide our creativity and prevent us from going around in circles.

为什么要使用游戏设计宏?

Why Use a Game Design Macro?

游戏设计宏是一份精简的游戏设计文档。它是一份想法矩阵,代表了我们游戏设计的概述。它以紧凑的方式列出了我们游戏的所有重要方面,为我们提供足够的信息来指导项目。它不会纠结于细节,因为随着我们在开发游戏的过程中不断发现新东西,细节很容易发生变化。我们应该能够从游戏设计宏中一目了然地看到项目的重要量化方面:游戏有多少个关卡或地点、有多少个角色、有多少种主要对象类型等等。

A game design macro is a stripped-down game design document. It’s a matrix of ideas that represents an overview of our game’s design. It lists all the important aspects of our game in a compact way, giving us enough information to be able to steer the project. It doesn’t dwell on details, because they are prone to change as we make discoveries while working on our game. We should be able to see at a glance from the game design macro important quantitative aspects of the project: how many levels or locations the game has, how many characters, how many major object types, and so on.

游戏设计宏的概念来自 Mark Cerny,他在 2002 年的 DICE 演讲中讨论了这一概念,他将其称为“方法”的数字游戏开发方法。

The concept of the game design macro comes from Mark Cerny, who discusses it in his 2002 D.I.C.E talk about the approach to digital game development that he dubbed Method.

在 Method 中,传统的设计文档被完全抛弃。相反,设计被分为宏观设计和微观设计。宏观设计是一份五页的文档,它给出了你的游戏所适用的框架,并且是预生产结束时的可交付成果。微观设计就是你的游戏本身,是在生产过程中即时创建的。通过将这两者分开,你可以制作一款既连贯又有趣的创意游戏。

宏观设计在预制作结束时完成。微观设计在制作过程中创建。……这种方法是游戏开发中最危险的神话之一的产物:“最初的愿景越明确越好。” 2

In Method, traditional design documentation is completely discarded. Instead, the design is split into macro and micro designs. The macro design is a five-page document that gives the framework that your game fits into and is a deliverable at the end of preproduction. The micro design is what your game is and is created on the fly during production. By separating these two, you can make a creative game that is still coherent and fun to play.

The macro design is completed by the end of preproduction. The micro design is created during production. This methodology is the result of one of the most dangerous myths in game development: “The more defined your initial vision, the better.”2

马克继续批评了在开始制作游戏之前需要编写一份长达一百页的游戏设计文档的想法。他告诉我们,我们不仅不需要这份文档来开始我们的游戏,而且我们永远都不需要它编写这样的文档是一种资源浪费,会让你误以为自己知道的比实际知道的更多。而且,正如马克·塞尼所说,“无论它有多棒,我向你保证:没有玩家会喜欢你的游戏设计文档。” 3

Mark goes on to criticize the idea that we need to write a hundred-page game design document before we start making our game. He tells us that not only do we not need this document to start our game, we don’t need it ever. Writing such a document is a waste of resources and lulls you into thinking that you know more than you actually do. And, as Mark Cerny says, “No matter how great it is, I guarantee you: no player will ever enjoy your game design document.”3

不过,我们确实需要创建一些文档——我们不能盲目地投入全面生产。我们需要一张地图。我们根据创建时发现的内容来制定宏我们的垂直切片。它仅包含我们进入全面生产所需的设计信息和设计决策。

We do have to create some documentation, though—we can’t fly blind into full production. We need a map. We base the macro on what we discover when we create our vertical slice. It contains the design information and design decisions that we need to enter full production, and no more.

Mark Cerny 告诉我,游戏设计宏的概念是为《古惑狼 2:皮质反击战》发明的。我通过研究为《Jak 3》编写的宏详细了解了游戏设计宏,《Jak 3》是我在项目即将结束时参与的。然后,我继续以首席游戏设计师的身份为《Jak X:战斗赛车》和我参与的所有三款《神秘海域》游戏的宏做出贡献。我相信,顽皮狗、Insomniac Games 和其他使用该技术的工作室制作的游戏质量很高,这清楚地表明了游戏设计宏的实用性。4

Mark Cerny told me that the idea of the game design macro was invented for Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back. I learned about the game design macro in detail by studying the one that had been written for Jak 3, a project that I worked on toward its end. I then went on to contribute to the macros as a lead game designer for Jak X: Combat Racing and for all three of the Uncharted games that I worked on. I believe that the good quality of the games created by Naughty Dog, Insomniac Games, and other studios that use the technique clearly shows the usefulness of the game design macro.4

游戏设计宏和我们的项目目标

The Game Design Macro and Our Project Goals

游戏设计宏与我们在第 7 章中讨论的项目目标有着重要的关系。你可以将宏视为我们在项目目标中设定的体验目标和设计目标的扩展和更详细的定义。

The game design macro has an important relationship with the project goals that we discussed in chapter 7. You can consider the macro to be an expansion and a more detailed definition of the experience goal and design goals that we set out in our project goals.

有时,我们的项目目标会在预生产过程中发生变化。这可能是因为我们在垂直切片上的工作产生的游戏并不完全符合我们的项目目标,但足够引人注目,以至于我们想遵循新的方向。当这种情况发生时,在开始游戏设计宏之前修改项目目标很重要。最迟,如果你要锁定新的项目目标,你应该在预生产结束时,在完成宏的同时这样做。我们总是希望在进入全面生产时,通过让我们的项目目标和游戏设计宏很好地保持一致,来保持我们的愿景连贯。

Sometimes, our project goals can change partway through preproduction. This might happen because the game that emerges from our work on the vertical slice didn’t exactly match our project goals but was compelling enough that we wanted to follow a new direction. When that happens, it’s important to revise your project goals before starting work on the game design macro. At the very latest, if you’re going to lock in new project goals, you should do so by the end of preproduction, at the same time as you complete the macro. We always want to keep our vision coherent by having our project goals and game design macro line up nicely as we head into full production.

游戏设计宏的两个部分

The Two Parts of a Game Design Macro

在 DICE 演讲中,Mark Cerny 将游戏设计宏描述为两个部分。第一部分是简短的游戏设计概述,总结了游戏的核心元素:游戏玩法的基本元素、游戏中最重要的特殊机制以及游戏情节的简要概述。

In his D.I.C.E. talk, Mark Cerny describes the game design macro as having two parts. The first part is a short game design overview summarizing the core elements of the game: the fundamental elements of gameplay, the most important of the game’s special mechanics, and a brief outline of the game’s plot.

宏观的第二部分是宏观图表,这是一种电子表格或表格,它逐步细分了游戏的各个级别以及每个级别中发生的动作、活动和故事情节。这第二部分通常需要更多的设计工作来创建,而在顽皮狗,宏观图表游戏设计宏观这两个术语几乎成了同义词。

The second part of the macro is a macro chart, which is a spreadsheet or table that gives a step-by-step breakdown of the levels of the game, and the action, activities, and story beats that take place within each level. This second part typically takes a lot more design effort to create, and at Naughty Dog, the terms macro chart and game design macro became pretty much synonymous.

游戏设计概述

The Game Design Overview

专业游戏开发团队应在创建垂直切片期间或之后创建游戏设计概述文档。同样,它应该是一份相对较短的文档:根据项目规模,长度在 5 到 20 页之间。它应包含游戏中所有最重要的游戏设计和叙事元素的介绍,以及游戏方向的其他重要方面。

Professional game development teams should create a game design overview document during or after the creation of their vertical slice. Again, it should be a relatively short document: between five and twenty pages depending on the scale of the project. It should contain an introduction to all the most important game design and narrative elements in the game, along with other important aspects of the game’s direction.

它应该描述我们在第 10 章中讨论的“三个 C”——角色、镜头和控制,并讨论游戏的主要游戏机制、动词和玩家活动。对于有这些内容的游戏,它应该介绍游戏中的重要角色以及游戏情节的概述(如果有故事)。它应该展示或描述为游戏计划的艺术指导、声音设计、音乐和图形设计,并应阐明游戏的基调和氛围。

It should describe the “three Cs” of character, camera, and control that we discussed in chapter 10, and should discuss the major game mechanics, verbs, and player activities of the game. For a game that has them, it should introduce the important characters in the game along with an overview of the game’s plot (if it has a story). It should show or describe the art direction, sound design, music, and graphic design planned for the game, and should set out the tone and mood of the game.

游戏设计概述是游戏设计宏观的重要组成部分,可帮助团队的创意领导向团队成员、项目利益相关者和任何其他相关方表达他们的想法。因此,它代表了我们在垂直切片中看到的设计元素的一种社会契约。

The game design overview is an important part of the game design macro and helps the creative leadership of the team represent their ideas to their team members, their project stakeholders, and any other interested parties. As such, it represents a kind of social contract about the design elements that we see in the vertical slice.

(在我为期十五周、单学期的课程中,我不会让我的学生创建游戏设计概述。我们可以在垂直切片中轻松地看到、听到和体验游戏的三个 C、核心游戏玩法和美学方向,我不想在游戏开发最紧张的阶段给他们添麻烦。但是,如果我的课程持续一整学年,我肯定会让我的学生撰写游戏设计概述文档,作为创建清晰、引人注目的游戏设计文档并为游戏设定方向的练习。)

(In my fifteen-week, single-semester classes, I do not have my students create a game design overview. We can easily see, hear, and play the three Cs, core gameplay, and aesthetic direction of their games in their vertical slices, and I don’t want to make busywork for them during what is likely to be one of the most intense phases of their game’s development. However, if my class lasted a full academic year, I would certainly have my students write a game design overview document as an exercise in creating clear, compelling game design documentation and in setting direction for their game.)

游戏设计宏观图表

The Game Design Macro Chart

游戏设计宏图是通过详细思考游戏的体验流程并将其记录在电子表格中而制作的。这是创建游戏设计宏图最困难的部分,也是最有价值的部分。它帮助我们就游戏中发生的事情达成一致,是控制项目范围的重要一步。

The game design macro chart is made by thinking through the experience flow of a game in detail and writing it down in a spreadsheet. This is the most difficult part of creating a game design macro and also the most valuable. It helps us to reach an agreement about what’s going in our game and is an important step toward bringing the scope of our project under control.

游戏设计宏观图表由十个或更多的电子表格列组成,并且需要尽可能多的行来足够详细地描述游戏。

The game design macro chart is made up of ten or more spreadsheet columns and as many rows are needed to describe the game in just enough detail.

在这个电子表格中,我们必须描述(用 Mark Cerny 的话来说)“什么样的游戏玩法在游戏中会出现在哪里。”我们还必须注意“你打算使用的每个机制都应该出现在这个图表中。”我们在创建游戏设计宏时的目标是“了解游戏的计划多样性、游戏的范围及其高级结构。” 5

In this spreadsheet, we have to describe (in Mark Cerny’s words) “what sort of gameplay goes where in the game.” We also have to take note that “every mechanic that you intend to use should be in this chart.” What we’re aiming for in creating the game design macro is “a knowledge of the planned variety of the game, the scope of the game, its high-level structure.”5

电子表格的纵轴代表时间,游戏的最早部分在顶部,游戏的结束部分在底部。(本章后面我将讨论如何使用宏来处理非线性游戏。)电子表格横轴上的列用于列出对游戏每个部分的设计很重要的信息。

The vertical axis of the spreadsheet represents time, with the earliest part of the game at the top, and the end of the game at the bottom. (Later in this chapter I’ll talk about how to use a macro to handle nonlinear games.) The columns along the horizontal axis of the spreadsheet are used to list out information important to the design of each part of the game.

《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》的游戏设计宏是一个大约 70 行的电子表格,它几乎精确地显示了我们在一年半后发布的游戏结构,误差在 5% 或 10% 以内。因此,宏图比在前期制作期间编写的任何一百页的游戏设计都更具体。它将重要的细节固定到位,但它具有足够的抽象程度,因此您不必浪费时间设计后来会更改的设计元素。

The game design macro for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was a spreadsheet around seventy rows long, and it showed the structure of the game that we shipped a year and a half later almost exactly, to within 5 or 10 percent. So, the macro chart is more concrete than any hundred-page game design ever written during preproduction. It pins important details into place, but it has enough of a level of abstraction that you don’t waste time devising design elements that later get changed.

游戏设计宏图的行和列

The Rows and Columns of the Game Design Macro Chart

让我们开始更详细地分析游戏设计宏图。我们将从 Mark Cerny 在 DICE 演讲中给出的一个例子开始。

Let’s start to break down the game design macro chart in greater detail. We’ll start with an example that Mark Cerny gives in his D.I.C.E. talk.

每行描述一个关卡。相关信息因游戏而异,但在(一种可能)情况下,它是关卡的地点、它是 3D 还是 2D 关卡、它包含哪些“奇特”的游戏玩法、玩家必须收集哪些东西才能进入关卡。最后,可以在关卡中收集哪些对象。6

Each row describes one of the levels. The relevant information changes from game to game, but in (one possible) case, it’s the locale of the level, whether it’s a 3D or 2D level, what “exotic” gameplay it contains, what the player must have collected in order to enter the level. And finally, what objects can be collected in the level.6

Mark 的例子来自游戏规模较小的时代。如今,游戏设计宏图中的一行只能描述关卡的一小部分。但 Mark 为我们提供了思考宏图每一行的良好起点。

Mark’s example comes from a time when games were smaller. Today, a single row in a game design macro chart would only describe one small part of a level. But Mark gives us a good starting point to think about each row of the macro.

每行应描述:

Each row should describe:

  • 游戏该部分的环境
  • The environment of that part of the game
  • 环境中的物体和人物
  • The objects and characters in the environment
  • 那里发生的游戏类型
  • The type of gameplay taking place there
  • 玩家必须做什么或可以做什么
  • What the player has to do or could do there

对于具有叙事成分的游戏,行还应该从故事的角度描述发生的事情。

For games with a narrative component, the row should also describe what happens from a story point of view.

每个游戏都是不同的。当我加入南加州大学时,我知道我想把游戏设计宏带给我的学生,以便更好地制作游戏设计文档。但一开始我很犹豫:宏能用来描述各种各样的游戏吗,而不仅仅是我曾经做过的那种角色动作故事叙述游戏?

Every game is different. When I joined USC, I knew that I wanted to bring the game design macro to my students as a better way of making game design documentation. But I was hesitant at first: could the macro be used to describe a wide variety of games, not just the kind of character-action storytelling games that I had worked on?

令人高兴的是,我发现这个问题的答案是肯定的。几乎每种类型的游戏的设计都可以在电子表格中得到总结预制作结束。创建游戏设计宏图是检查任何游戏结构和掌握其范围的好方法。

Happily, I’ve discovered that the answer to this question is a resounding yes. The design of most every type of game benefits from being summarized in a spreadsheet at the end of preproduction. Creating a game design macro chart is a great way of examining any game’s structure and getting a handle on its scope.

游戏设计宏图表模板

A Game Design Macro Chart Template

图 17.1是一个模板,可帮助您开始创建游戏设计宏图表。该模板实际上只是一个电子表格,每列都有一个标题。根据需要添加尽可能多的行来描述您的游戏。

Figure 17.1 is a template to help you get started in creating a game design macro chart. The template is really just a spreadsheet, with a heading for each column. Add as many rows as you need to describe your game.

图 17.1

Figure 17.1

游戏设计宏图表模板。

A game design macro chart template.

不同风格的游戏可能需要不同的游戏设计宏观图表标题,但这组标题是一个很好的起点。您可以随意创建符合您需求的标题。以下是除玩家目标、设计目标和情感节奏之外的大多数列的描述,我将在最后的各自部分中详细描述它们。

Different styles of game might need different game design macro chart headings, but this set is a good starting point. Feel free to create headings that match your needs. Here’s a description of most of the columns, apart from Player Goal, Design Goal, and Emotional Beat, which I’ll describe in detail in their own section at the end.

位置/序列名称

Location/Sequence Name

最左边的列为该行提供了标题,描述了该行事件发生的地点。它可能是“在一口旧井的底部”或“在气闸舱内”。我可以想象一款没有地点的游戏,或者游戏事件与地点没有严格的联系,这就是为什么我为这个标题提供了替代的“序列名称”。

The leftmost column gives us a title for this row, by describing where the events of the row take place. It might be “at the bottom of an old well” or “inside the airlock.” I can imagine a game without locations or where gameplay events aren’t strictly tied to locations, which is why I offer the alternative “sequence name” for this heading.

时间/天气/心情

Time of Day/Weather/Mood

黎明、早晨、下午、黄昏还是夜晚?晴天、闷热还是暴风雨?否则,这一行的气氛是什么?此列对于艺术总监创建“颜色脚本”以规划游戏中的调色板和气氛进展非常有用。

Daybreak, morning, afternoon, dusk, or night? Fine, sweltering, or stormy? Otherwise, what is the mood of this row? This column is useful to art directors creating “color scripts” to plan the color palette and mood progression through a game.

事件简述

Brief Description of Events

简而言之,从游戏玩法和故事的角度来看,这里发生了什么?这里将提供非常简短的概述,并将由此行中的其他列进行补充。

In a nutshell, what happens here, from both a gameplay and story perspective? This is a place to give a very brief overview that will be supplemented by the other columns in this row.

玩家机制

Player Mechanics

在游戏的这个部分,玩家可以使用哪些机制?即使你不期望玩家使用所有机制,也应该列出每个可用部分。列出玩家机制可以提醒玩家已经学会了什么以及可以什么。它还可能为游戏的这一部分提供设计机会。

What mechanics are available for the player to use in this part of the game? They should be listed out for every section where they’re available, even if you don’t expect the player to use them all. Listing the player mechanics will act as a reminder of what the player has learned to do and could do. It might also suggest design opportunities for that part of the game.

使用颜色编码或加粗来显示新引入的机制。您甚至可以在单独的列中列出新机制。了解游戏的这一部分是否需要花时间引入和练习新的东西非常有用。有些游戏在引入游戏机制后会将其删除,您也可以在此处指出这一点。

Use color-coding or bolding to show when mechanics are being newly introduced. You could even list new mechanics in their own separate column. It’s very useful to see whether this part of the game has to spend time introducing and practicing something new. Some games take away game mechanics after they’ve been introduced, and you could indicate that here too.

如果游戏随着时间的推移在多个玩家角色之间跳转,您可以在此列中指明正在使用哪个玩家角色,或者更好的是,将该信息分解到单独的列中。

If a game jumps between multiple player-characters over time, you could indicate which player-character is being used in this column or—even better—break out that information into a separate column.

遇到的角色(包括敌人)

Characters Encountered (including Enemies)

玩家在游戏的这个部分会遇到哪些角色?记住,敌人也是角色!如果这对你有用(就像对我们在《神秘海域》中所做的那样),将友方或中立的非玩家角色和敌人分成两列或三列。

What characters will the player encounter in this part of the game? Remember, enemies are characters too! If it’s useful to you (as it was for us on Uncharted), break friendly or neutral nonplayer characters and enemies out into two or three different columns.

遇到的物体

Objects Encountered

在游戏的这个部分可以找到什么物品?可以解锁的门?钥匙和开关?里面有硬币的易碎罐子?弹性平台?神秘卷轴?播放语音邮件的手机?谜题物品、强化道具、武器、盔甲、药水和小饰品都应列在这里,以及任何传递叙事的物品,如信件、书籍或录音。

What objects are to be found in this part of the game? Doors that can be unlocked? Keys and switches? Breakable jars with a penny inside? Bouncy platforms? Arcane scrolls? Cell phones that play a voicemail message? Puzzle items, power-ups, weapons, armor, potions, and trinkets should all be listed here, along with any objects that deliver narrative, like letters, books, or audio recordings.

所需其他资产

Other Assets Needed

此处的资产是指完成游戏这一部分所需的视觉艺术、动画、音频和触觉(控制器振动)设计元素。它们通常只是为了美观而存在的东西,可能在背景中。如果创建它们需要花费一点时间,请在此处列出它们。

Assets here means elements of visual art, animation, audio, and haptic (controller vibration) design that will be needed to make this part of the game complete. They are often things that are present just for aesthetic value, maybe in the background. If they’re going to be even slightly time-consuming to create, list them here.

音频笔记

Audio Notes

游戏设计师经常没有尽早考虑游戏的声音设计。这是一个很大的错误——我们从一开始就考虑声音设计,从而制作出最好的游戏。加入本专栏是为了促使我们思考游戏的音频需求游戏的宏观细节。游戏中有音乐还是只有环境音效?制作音效会不会特别困难或耗时?配乐是否具有自适应性(会根据游戏中的事件而改变)?

Game designers often fail to think about the sound design of their games early enough. That’s a big mistake—we make the best games by thinking about sound design from the beginning. The inclusion of this column is a nudge to think through the audio needs of the game in macro-level detail. Does the game have music or just ambient sounds? Will any of the sound effects be particularly difficult or time-consuming to create? Will the soundtrack be adaptive (will it change based on events in gameplay)?

在这里做足够的笔记,以表明您计划进行的音乐和声音设计工作的规模和范围。与声音设计师或作曲家一起演练游戏的过程称为声音或音乐的“定位”,因此请抓住与音频人才合作的机会,尽早开始定位垂直切片以帮助您编写宏。

Make enough notes here to indicate the scale and scope of the music and sound design work that you plan to do. The process of walking through a game with a sound designer or composer is called “spotting” for sound or music, so seize the opportunity to collaborate with audio talent and start spotting your vertical slice early to help you write your macro.

视觉效果说明

Visual Effects Notes

同样,游戏设计师经常没有尽早考虑游戏将包含的视觉效果。创建视觉效果可能非常耗时,因此您应该在游戏设计宏中至少列出游戏每个部分的主要视觉效果。

Similarly, game designers often fail to think early enough about the visual effects their game is going to include. Visual effects can be time-consuming to create, and so you should list out at least the major visual effects for each part of the game in the game design macro.

玩家目标、设计目标和情感节奏

Player Goal, Design Goal, and Emotional Beat

受我的朋友艾米·亨尼格 (Amy Hennig) 的角色动作游戏设计理念的影响,我开发了这些列标题来帮助我们思考游戏设计的层次性。

Influenced by the character-action game design ideas of my friend Amy Hennig, I developed these column headings to help us to think through the layered nature of a game’s design.

球员进球

Player Goal

当人们玩游戏时,他们会根据游戏告诉他们什么、他们想做什么、他们对游戏运作方式的理解以及他们在其他类似游戏中的体验,为自己设定游戏内的目标。米哈里·契克森米哈赖将这种自我目标设定过程描述为“自得其乐”,他将其与坚持不懈、好奇心、积极性、开放的体验和学习意愿联系起来。7 契克森米哈赖是一位心理学家,他因“心流”概念而为游戏设计师所熟知,心流是一种高度集中的精神状态,存在于运动员、外科医生和游戏玩家身上。)

When someone plays a game, they set goals for themselves within the game, based on what the game tells them, what they want to do, what they understand about how the game works, and what they’ve experienced in other, similar games. This process of self-goal setting is described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as “autotelism,” and he associates it with persistence, curiosity, positivity, openness to experience, and a willingness to learn.7 (Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist well-known to game designers for his concept of “flow,” a highly focused mental state found in athletes, surgeons, and game players alike.)

简而言之,游戏每个部分的玩家目标就是玩家手持控制器 (a) 想要做的事情或 (b) 认为他们应该做的事情。利用你掌握的所有创造性手段,结合你对人类心理学的理解,对玩家为自己设定的目标做出最佳预测。如果你熟悉 Agile 中的用户故事或用户体验设计中的用户旅程的概念,那么玩家目标就包含了两者的某些内容。

Simply put, the player goal for each part of your game is what the player holding the controller (a) wants to do or (b) thinks they’re meant to be doing. Use all the creative means at your disposal, along with your understanding of human psychology, to make your best predictions about the goals your players will set for themselves. If you’re familiar with the idea of user stories in Agile or the user journey in user experience design, then player goals encapsulate something from both.

优秀的游戏设计师永远不会忽视这样一个事实:当玩家第一次接触游戏时,他们不知道自己能做什么,也不知道应该怎么做。玩家可能会带着一些先入为主的观念,并很快得出结论游戏会根据玩家提供的哪怕是最微弱的信息来判断玩家的意图。但作为设计师,我们有责任让玩家了解这款游戏的内容和玩法。很快,通过尝试控制和观察游戏环境,他们就会开始明白游戏的玩法。

A good game designer never loses sight of the fact that when a player first approaches a game, they have no idea what they can do or how they’re meant to do it. The player might bring some preconceptions with them and will quickly jump to conclusions based on even the faintest traces of information the game gives them. But it’s up to us as designers to shape our players’ understanding of what this game holds in store and how it can be played. Soon, by experimenting with the controls and observing the game’s environment, they start to figure it out.

Anna Anthropy 和 Naomi Clark在她们的著作《游戏设计词汇:探索优秀游戏设计背后的基本原则》中讨论《超级马里奥兄弟》的“世界 1-1”关卡时,给出了一个很好的例子。在谈到优秀的游戏设计如何通过游戏来教授游戏的机制和元素时,她们说道:

Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark give us a great example of this when they discuss the level “World 1–1” of Super Mario Bros. in their book A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles behind Good Game Design. In talking about how good game design can teach a game’s mechanics and elements simply through play, they say:

1985 年的《超级马里奥兄弟》不需要教程。它使用设计、具有交流性的视觉词汇和对玩家心理的理解(通过观察玩家玩游戏、更改游戏并再次观察他们获得)来引导玩家了解游戏的基本知识。这些初始屏幕教会了玩家需要知道的一切:马里奥从空白屏幕的左侧开始,面朝右侧。漂浮的闪亮奖励物体和缓慢但危险的怪物(通过朝相反方向行走与马里奥形成对比)激励玩家跳跃。8

Super Mario Bros., 1985, didn’t need a tutorial. It used design, a communicative visual vocabulary, and an understanding of player psychology—gained from watching players play the game, changing it, and watching them again—to guide the player to understanding the basics of the game. Those first screens teach everything the player needs to know: Mario starts on the left of an empty screen, facing right. The floating, shining reward object and the slow but menacing monster—set in opposition to Mario by walking in the opposite direction—give the player an incentive to jump.8

随着玩家继续游戏,他们会设定越来越多的目标,并在游戏过程中不断发现新事物并学习技能。他们可能会决定必须前往关卡中的某个地方、收集一些物品或找到打开门的钥匙。作为设计师,你的工作就是在玩家设定目标时引导他们的体验。在“玩家目标”下,写下你希望玩家理解的他们游戏这一部分的目标(或可能的目标)。在游戏测试期间,你可以跟踪玩家如何为自己设定目标或不设定目标,并相应地调整你的设计。(在这里,回想一下我们在第 12 章中讨论过的设计师模型、系统图像和用户模型可能会对你有所帮助。)

As the player continues to play, they set more and more goals, making discoveries and learning skills as they go. They might decide that they have to go to a certain place in a level, collect some objects, or find a key to unlock a door. As a designer, it is your job to guide the player’s experience as they set goals. Under “Player Goal,” write what you want the player to understand as their goal (or possible goals) for this part of the game. During playtests, you can track how players set or don’t set goals for themselves and adjust your design accordingly. (It might help you here to think back to the designer’s model, system image, and user’s model we discussed in chapter 12.)

游戏设计师可能会为玩家设定明确的目标。我们可以在关卡开始时用文字泡泡告诉他们,“收集一百颗星星,并在时间耗尽前到达终点线!”或者我们会让玩家自己决定要做什么才能前进。在这种情况下,我们必须决定如何(以及在​​多大程度上)诱导玩家理解游戏的目标。

The designers of a game might set explicit goals for their players. We can tell them in a text bubble at the start of a level, “Collect a hundred stars and get to the finish line before the timer runs out!” Or maybe we’ll let the player work out for themselves what they have to do to progress. In this case, we will have to decide how (and to what extent) we want to coax players into understanding the goals of the game.

设计目标

Design Goal

游戏设计师通常希望通过游戏的某个部分实现其他目标,而不仅仅是让玩家设定目标。我们希望教会玩家一些东西,让他们有机会练习他们已经学到的东西,测试他们的技能,或者给他们设置一个谜题。我们可能想在游戏故事中引入一个新角色,发展现有角色之间的关系,或者展示一个标志着重要情节点的事件。我们可能还有其他更复杂的目标。

Game designers often want to achieve other goals with a part of the game, beyond simply getting the player to set their goal. We want to teach the player something, give them an opportunity to practice something they’ve already learned, test their skill, or set them a puzzle. We might want to introduce a new character into the game’s story, develop a relationship between preexisting characters, or show an event happening that marks an important plot point. We might have other, more complex, goals.

游戏每个部分的设计目标就是设计师在游戏的该部分中实际想要实现的目标。它可能很简单,比如介绍让玩家适应“跳跃”机制,或者让玩家找到一种新方法来使用现有的能力打败 Boss,这种机制可能非常复杂。(塞尔达系列游戏经常采用这种方式。)

The design goal for each part of the game is what the designer is trying to accomplish in practical terms in that part of the game. It might be as simple as introducing the player to the “jump” mechanic, or it might be as complex as having them discover a new way to use an existing ability to defeat a boss. (The Zelda games do this a lot.)

有时玩家的目标和游戏设计师的目标会以简单的方式对齐:“在计时器结束之前到达关卡终点并收集一百颗星星,并享受其中的乐趣!”但很多时候,玩家想要的东西和设计师想要的东西之间的相互作用更加复杂——并且可以为设计师创造一些极好的创意机会,我们稍后会看到。

Sometimes the player’s goals and the game designer’s goals line up in a simple way: “Get to the end of the level and collect a hundred stars before the timer runs out, and have fun doing it!” But very often, the interplay between what the player wants and what the designer wants is more complex—and can create some excellent creative opportunities for designers, as we’ll see in a moment.

因此,在“设计目标”下,写下你作为游戏设计师希望在游戏的这一部分实现的目标。在游戏测试期间,你可以跟踪你实现这一目标的情况。你是否教会了玩家你想要引入的新机制?你是否让他们喜欢一个友好的 NPC?他们是否为自己设定了你希望他们设定的玩家目标?

So, under “Design Goal,” write what you, the game’s designer, wish to achieve in this part of the game. During playtests, you can track how well you achieve this goal. Did you teach the player the new mechanic you wanted to introduce? Did you get them to feel fond of a friendly NPC? Did they set a player goal for themselves that you wanted them to set?

情感节拍

Emotional Beat

当玩家玩游戏的某个部分时,他们会对该部分产生主观体验。回想一下我们在项目构思阶段结束时如何为游戏设定总体体验目标。在第 7 章中,我们讨论了思维、记忆、想象、意志、感知和情感方面的体验,并特别关注情感。现在,我们将更加关注情感,以确定伴随游戏每个部分的“情感节奏”。您可以将情感节奏视为一系列子体验目标。

When someone plays a part of a game, they have a subjective experience of that part. Think back to how we set an overall experience goal for our game at the end of the ideation phase of the project. In chapter 7, we talked about experience in terms of thought, memory, imagination, will, perception, and emotion, with a particular focus on emotion. We’re now going to focus even more closely on emotion in determining the “emotional beat” that accompanies each part of our game. You can think of emotional beats as a sequence of sub-experience goals.

游戏的每个部分都有机会在玩家玩游戏时塑造他们的情感和智力体验。通常最好关注情感,这就是为什么游戏设计宏观图表的这一栏标题为“情感节拍”。对于有故事的游戏——或任何一种叙事元素——玩家在游戏过程中的情感展开至关重要。游戏中的每个时刻都可能让玩家感到快乐或兴奋、孤独或悲伤,或者罗伯特·普拉奇克博士的“情感之轮”中显示的任何情感(图 7.2)。

Each part of a game has an opportunity to shape the player’s emotional and intellectual experience during the time they spend playing it. It’s usually best to focus on emotion, which is why this column of a game design macro chart is titled “Emotional Beat.” For games with a story—or any kind of narrative element—the unfolding of the player’s emotion as they move through the game is critically important. Each moment in the game might make the player feel happy or excited, lonely or sad, or anything shown in Dr. Robert Plutchik’s “wheel of emotions” (figure 7.2).

(如果超越情感去思考其他类型的体验是有用的,那就这样做吧。也许你的游戏会以一种令人难忘的方式传达新的想法:游戏的实际教学应用是巨大的。也许它会给你的玩家一个纯粹的感知体验:对橙色的生动新认识,或者人们从 ASMR 视频中获得的寒意。如果你想专注于非情感类型的体验,可以考虑添加适当的列,如“感知节拍”或“概念节拍”。)

(If it’s useful to think beyond emotion to other types of experience, then do so. Maybe your game will convey new ideas in a memorable way: the practical teaching applications of games are immense. Maybe it will give your players a purely perceptual experience: a vivid new appreciation of the color orange, or the chills people get from ASMR videos. If you want to focus on nonemotional types of experience, consider adding appropriate columns like “Perceptual Beat” or “Conceptual Beat.”)

规划一系列情感体验是任何讲故事者的关键技能,对于游戏设计师来说,也越来越重要。马修·鲁恩是一名作家,曾是皮克斯的故事讲述者,在《神秘海域 2》的创作过程中,我们一群顽皮狗人参加了他的一个研讨会,以提高我们讲故事的能力。在他的书《最好的故事胜出:如何在商业及其他领域利用好莱坞故事讲述》中,马修描述了如何通过产生多巴胺的乐观情绪和释放催产素的悲观情绪的对比模式来创造强大的情感效果。他以皮克斯电影《飞屋环游记》的开头,在电影的前五分钟就让许多观众感动落泪。马修透露,这个片段之所以如此感人,部分原因是快乐和悲伤时刻的快速交替。他说,“当我们在故事中将这些悲伤和快乐的时刻并排放置时,我们就为人们的心灵构建了一个游乐园。跌宕起伏、紧张和放松,你就创造了一个让观众坐立难安的故事。” 9不难看出,游戏玩法的跌宕起伏也能让玩家沉浸于优秀游戏的流畅状态中。

Planning a sequence of emotional experience is a key skill for any storyteller and, increasingly, for game designers too. Matthew Luhn is a writer and former Pixar storyteller, and during the creation of Uncharted 2 a group of us from Naughty Dog attended one of his workshops in order to improve our storytelling ability. In his book The Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business and Beyond, Matthew describes how contrasting patterns of dopamine-producing upbeats and oxytocin-releasing downbeats can create powerful emotional effects. He uses the example of the beginning of Pixar’s Up, which moves many audience members to tears within the film’s first five minutes. Matthew reveals that this sequence is so moving in part because of its rapid-fire pattern of happy and sad moments. He says, “When we place these sad and happy moments next to each other in a story, we build an amusement park ride for people’s hearts and minds. Ups and downs, tension and release, you’ve created a story that keeps an audience sitting on the edge of their seats.”9 It’s easy to see how the ups and downs of gameplay also keep a player gripped by the flow state of an excellent game.

心理学和个人经验告诉我们,最强烈的情感体验是随着时间的推移而形成的。想想我们对老朋友、父母或长期伴侣的深爱。想想我们失去其中之一时可能会感到的深切悲痛。生活中的偶然事件会产生情感的高峰和低谷,但一部优秀的电影或游戏结束时巨大的情感回报并非偶然:电影制作人或设计师一点一点地将你带入其中。杰西·谢尔的优秀著作《游戏设计的艺术》第 16 章描述了设计师、艺术家和艺人如何使用“兴趣曲线”来规划引人入胜的体验序列。10

Psychology and personal experience tell us that the strongest emotional experience builds over time. Think of the deep love we feel for old friends, our parents, or a long-term partner. Think of the profound grief we might feel at the loss of one of these. The happenstance of life produces emotional heights and depths, but the huge emotional payoff at the end of an excellent movie or game doesn’t happen by accident: the filmmakers or designers have moved you there beat by beat. Chapter 16 of Jesse Schell’s excellent book The Art of Game Design describes how designers, artists, and entertainers can use “interest curves” to plan sequences of compelling experience.10

我们设定的项目目标所着眼的持久情感体验是由对比情绪模式构成的。这是人们经常忽略的一点:为了讲述一个关于一种情感的故事,你必须运用多种情感。一个悲伤的故事不可能全是悲伤的:如果我们在故事中没有体验到一些快乐,我们就不会深刻地感受到悲伤。

The lasting emotional experiences that we set our sights on with our project goals are made up of patterns of contrasting emotion. This is something that people often overlook: in order to tell a story about one emotion, you have to use many emotions. A sad story can’t be all sad: if we don’t experience some happiness along the way, we won’t feel the sadness in a profound way.

因此,在我们的游戏设计宏中,“情感节奏”一栏描述了设计师希望玩家在游戏的那一刻感受到什么。游戏设计师有很多塑造情感的技巧。其中最强大的技巧之一是声音设计(包括音乐创作),但游戏写作、调色板、视觉构图、灯光、角色设计,当然还有游戏机制,都在塑造玩家的情感方面发挥着作用。

So, in our game design macro, the “Emotional Beat” column describes what the designer would like the player to be feeling at that point in the game. Game designers have many techniques for shaping emotion. One of the most powerful of these is sound design (including musical composition), but game writing, color palette, visual composition, lighting, character design, and—of course—game mechanics all play a role in shaping the player’s emotion.

当然,认为我们能够完全且可预测地塑造每个人的情绪是错误的。我们每个人都会以个人的方式对艺术品做出情感反应。艺术家塑造的情感的可能性和模糊性是艺术伟大的一部分。这使得一件杰出的艺术品每次我们接近它时都会显得新鲜和新颖,也使得我们有可能随着时间的推移对一件艺术品产生不同的情感反应。

Of course, it’s wrong to think that we can completely and predictably shape the emotions of every person. Each of us responds emotionally to an artwork in a personal way. The possibilities and ambiguities around the emotion shaped by an artist are a part of what makes art great. It’s what makes an outstanding artwork appear fresh and new each time we approach it, and it’s what makes it possible for us to have different emotional reactions to an artwork over time.

在游戏设计宏观图表中清晰表达游戏的每种情感节奏有助于设计师制作出更好、更具情感冲击力的游戏。它还有助于我们进行宏观规划,因为它要求我们从玩家的主观角度思考游戏结构,从游戏玩法和叙事两个角度来看待游戏。

Articulating each emotional beat of our game in the game design macro chart helps designers to make better, more emotionally impactful games. It also helps us in our macro-level planning by requiring us to think through the structure of our games from the player’s subjective perspective, as viewed through the lenses of both gameplay and narrative.

玩家目标、设计目标和情感节奏之间关系的示例

An Example of the Relationship between Player Goal, Design Goal, and Emotional Beat

(a) 玩家感知或为自己设定的目标、(b) 游戏设计师对游戏某一部分的目标以及 (c) 游戏为玩家产生的情感体验之间的复杂关系是游戏设计艺术的关键部分。让我们看一个玩家目标、设计目标和情感节奏之间关系的例子。

This complex relationship between (a) the goals that the player perceives or sets for themselves, (b) the goals that the game designer has for a part of the game, and (c) the emotional experiences that the game produces for the player is a key part of the art of game design. Let’s look at an example of the relationship between player goals, design goals, and emotional beats.

在《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》的开头,我们的主角内森·德雷克在一辆失事的火车车厢中醒来,这辆车悬在悬崖边上,悬崖位于冰冻的喜马拉雅山脉的致命深渊之上。玩家通过一段简短的电影认识了德雷克,他们看到他受伤了。希望他痛苦不堪的脸的特写镜头足以引起玩家的同情。

At the beginning of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, our protagonist, Nathan Drake, wakes up in a wrecked train car which is dangling over the edge of a cliff above a fatally deep drop in the frozen Himalayan mountains. The player is introduced to Drake through a brief cinematic, and they see that he is wounded. Hopefully, the close-up of his pain-wracked face is enough to begin to elicit the player’s sympathy.

片刻之后,德雷克从座位上摔了下来,从垂直悬挂的火车车厢中摔了一百英尺,他设法抓住了扭曲的栏杆,痛苦地从栏杆上弹了下来,却被挂在车厢的最底部。现在玩家明白了德雷克的困境,希望我们能激励他们帮助他摆脱困境。这很自然地引发​​了一场球员目标。玩家可以清楚地看到,Drake 根本无路可走:他下面的落差太大了。唯一的逃脱方法就是向上攀爬。

Moments later, Drake tumbles from his seat, falls a hundred feet through the vertically suspended train car, and—managing to grab on to a twisted railing as he painfully bounces off it—is left hanging on to the very bottom of the car. Now that the player understands Drake’s predicament, hopefully we’ve inspired them to help him get out of this mess. This very naturally sets up a player goal. The player can see clearly that there’s no way down for Drake: the drop below him is too deep. The only way to escape is to climb upward.

许多(但不是全部)电子游戏玩家会自然地偏转控制器上的左摇杆,然后德雷克开始移动。栏杆的设计表明他只能向左移动,当他这样做时,他会绕过一个角落。玩家现在可以从视觉设计中再次看到,他们可以让他向上攀爬。玩家开始实现他们为自己设定的目标。

Many (though not all) videogame players will naturally deflect the left thumbstick on the controller, and Drake begins to move. The design of the railing suggests that he can only move to the left, and when he does so, he moves around a corner. The player can now see, again from the visual design, that they can make him climb upward. The player is beginning to achieve the goal they set for themselves.

当然,我们设计目标是让玩家将 Drake 带到安全的地方。但更大的设计目标是教会玩家我们游戏的核心机制。当玩家帮助 Drake 爬上被毁坏的火车车厢时,我们让他们经历一系列精心设计的动作,在火车车厢中上行、下行和穿过,使用屏幕上的提示介绍新的按钮按下操作,这些按钮将激活 Drake 的各种攀爬、跳跃和摆动能力。玩家将在游戏的其余部分使用这些能力,而这也是他们第一次学习这些能力的地方。

Of course, one part of our design goal was to have the player get Drake to safety. But a bigger design goal was to teach the player our game’s core mechanics. As the player helps Drake climb the ruined train car, we put them through a carefully staged sequence of moves, traveling up, around, and through the train car, using on-screen prompts to introduce new button presses that will activate Drake’s various climbing, jumping, and swinging abilities. The player will use these abilities throughout the rest of the game, and this is where they learn them first.

因此,我们的设计目标是为玩家提供教程。许多电子游戏都是从教程级别开始的,你可能想知道这有什么大不了的。这个序列的巧妙之处在于情绪节拍游戏的这一部分。德雷克在攀爬时发生了意想不到的、几乎是灾难性的事情:一块碎片从他身边坠落,火车座椅在他悬挂时让路,他紧紧抓住的一根管子向意想不到的方向摆动。所有这些都创造了惊喜、恐惧和兴奋,并以强弱节奏的模式加剧了玩家的紧张感。即使我们的理性思维知道我们的主角会成功,我们的情感思维也会被上演的场景所欺骗,从而产生怀疑戏剧性地,我们大脑的两个部分都渴望看到接下来会发生什么。这就是讲故事的原理。

So, our design goal here is to provide the player with a tutorial. Many videogames start with a tutorial level, and you might be wondering what the big deal is here. The finesse of this sequence comes with the emotional beats for this part of the game. Unexpected and near-disastrous things happen as Drake climbs: a chunk of debris plummets past him, a train seat gives way as he hangs from it, a pipe that he’s clinging to swings around in an unexpected direction. All of this creates surprise, fear, and excitement, and ratchets up the tension for the player in a pattern of upbeats and downbeats. Even if our rational minds know that our protagonist will make it through, our emotional minds can be tricked into doubting it by staging the scene dramatically, and both parts of our mind are keen to see what happens next. This is how storytelling works.

通过将玩家目标“让德雷克安全”与我们的设计目标“教会玩家游戏的核心遍历机制”以及“惊讶和恐惧”的情感节奏相结合,我们能够创建一个教程级别,吸引玩家进入游戏并在他们没有意识到的情况下教会他们一些东西。

By combining the player goal of “get Drake to safety” with our design goal of “teach the player the core traversal mechanics of the game” and the emotional beats of “surprise and fear,” we were able to create a tutorial level that drew the player into the game and taught them things without them even realizing that they were learning.

在《神秘海域 2》的开头,玩家通常只是以为自己已经踏上了一段激动人心的冒险之旅。他们可能从未想过我们设计师刚刚教给他们什么,或者他们将如何在游戏的后续部分使用这些知识。设计师从不冒着疏远玩家的风险,让他们经历繁琐的教程序列,然后才能真正开始玩游戏。

At the beginning of Uncharted 2, players typically just think they’ve been launched into the middle of an exciting adventure. They may not ever think about what we, the designers, have just taught them, or how they will use that knowledge in later parts of the game. Designers never run the risk of alienating the player by making them go through a heavy-handed tutorial sequence before they can really start to play the game.

每款游戏都有这种机会以优雅而有趣的方式教导新玩家,而在这里创造整个游戏精彩瞬间的可能性是无穷无尽的。通过将我们对游戏每个部分的理解和规划分解为对玩家目标、设计目标和情感节奏的考虑,我们可以更深入地了解我们在游戏中试图做什么,并可以发明巧妙的新方法来创造独特的游戏玩法和叙事体验。

Every game has this kind of opportunity to teach its new players in elegant and playful ways, and the extended possibilities here—for creating great moments throughout the entirety of a game—are endless. By breaking down our understanding about and planning for each part of our game into a consideration of player goals, design goals, and emotional beats, we can come to a deeper understanding of what we’re trying to do in our game and can invent clever new ways of creating unique gameplay and storytelling experiences.

游戏设计宏的优势

The Advantages of a Game Design Macro

编写游戏设计宏而不是冗长的游戏设计文档有两个主要优点。第一是交流游戏设计理念,第二是协助安排项目整个制作阶段的时间安排。

There are two chief advantages to writing a game design macro instead of a lengthy game design document. The first is in communicating game design ideas, and the second is in assisting in the scheduling of the full production phase of the project.

游戏设计宏作为沟通

The Game Design Macro as Communication

在我职业生涯的初期,我被要求编写的数百页文档从未受到队友的热情欢迎,它们堆积在桌子上,无人阅读。但我在顽皮狗工作时编写的游戏设计宏却一直受到我们团队中大多数人的热切期待,并被仔细研究其中所包含的信息。为什么会有如此大的差异?

The hundred-page documents that I was asked to write at the start of my career were never warmly received by my teammates and gathered dust, unread, on their desks. But the game design macros I worked on at Naughty Dog were always eagerly anticipated by most everyone on our teams and were pored over for the information they contained. Why the big difference?

游戏设计宏具有很好的可读性。如果编写得当、布局清晰,且文本部分简短易读,那么人们一眼就能看到顶层细节,再看一眼就能发现关键信息,而仔细阅读后就能轻松发现重要细节。

A game design macro has great readability. If it’s written well and laid out clearly, with short easy-to-scan sections of text, then top-level details can be taken in at first glance, key pieces of information jump out on a second look, and important details can easily be discovered with a closer reading.

使用信息设计技术,例如对宏图表中的单元格进行颜色编码、对某些关键字进行加粗和斜体处理、仔细调整其列宽大小以及冻结电子表格的顶行(以使其永远不会滚动出屏幕顶部)均可使宏变得易于阅读。

Using information design techniques like color-coding the cells in the macro chart, bolding and italicizing certain keywords, sizing their column widths carefully, and freezing the top row of the spreadsheet (so it never scrolls off the top of the screen) all make the macro easy to read.

通过使用流程图,宏可以变得更加清晰易读,就像 Insomniac Games 总监兼设计师 Brian Allgeier 在他的书中所描述的那样指导视频游戏:创意领袖的 101 条建议。11在一篇题为“提供结构:宏文档如何让项目保持正轨”的博客文章中,Brian 使用了《Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time》设计中的示例来说明补充基于电子表格的游戏设计宏图表的技术。他展示了如何使用概念图和屏幕截图来开发“视觉宏”,以及如何使用宏(如我之前提到的)创建颜色脚本,“用于映射整个体验中的调色板、情绪和情感的图像” 。12

The macro can be made even clearer and easier to read with the use of flowcharts, like those described by Insomniac Games director and designer Brian Allgeier in his book Directing Video Games: 101 Tips for Creative Leaders.11 In a blog post titled “Provide Structure: How Macro Documents Keep a Project on Course,” Brian uses examples from the design of Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time to illustrate techniques that supplement a spreadsheet-based game design macro chart. He shows how concept art and screenshots can be used to develop a “visual macro,” and how the macro can be used, as I mentioned earlier, to create a color script, “an image used for mapping out the color palettes, mood, and emotions across the experience.”12

宏观层面的游戏设计概述部分对于向高级制作人、工作室领导、发行商和其他财务支持者等利益相关者推介项目非常有用。它对于向开发团队内部推介项目也很有用。

The game design overview part of the macro is very useful for pitching the project to stakeholders like senior producers, studio leadership, publishers, and other financial backers. It’s also useful for pitching the project internally to the development team.

宏观图表中基于电子表格的宏观图表部分对于游戏开发团队来说尤其有价值,因为他们迫切希望了解他们要制作的游戏的结构和内容。游戏中有哪些角色?游戏发生在哪些地点?游戏包含什么样的玩法,故事如何展开?在一个多达数百人的大型开发团队中,很难将这些信息传达给每个需要的人,但游戏设计宏观图表可以帮助每个人在阅读 20 分钟后找到这些关键问题的答案。

The spreadsheet-based macro chart part of the macro is particularly valuable to the game development team, who are eager to know about the structure and content of the game they’re going to make. What characters feature in the game? What locations does the game take place in? What kind of gameplay does the game include, and how does the story unfold? On a large development team of up to several hundred people, it can be hard to transmit this information to everyone who needs it, but a game design macro chart helps everyone get some answers to these critical questions with just twenty minutes of reading.

以宏观形式呈现游戏设计信息不仅能让我们更容易理解游戏内容,还能让我们更清楚地了解游戏的计划顺序。正如 Mark Cerny 所说,宏观图表让我们更容易看到:

Presenting game design information in a macro form makes it easier to understand not just the content but the planned sequencing of the game. As Mark Cerny says, the macro chart allows us more easily to see:

某种类型的所有游戏玩法是否都集中在结尾或开头?技能和动作是否以流畅的分布方式引入和训练?我的等级进入门槛是否正常?13

Is all gameplay of a certain type bunched at the end or the beginning? Are abilities and moves introduced and trained in a smooth distribution? Do my barriers to level entry progress properly?13

游戏设计宏在传达游戏设计理念方面非常有效。首先,我们可以在预制作期间迭代游戏设计时,使用它来征求有关游戏设计演变的反馈。之后,在预制作结束时确定游戏设计后,我们就可以使用宏来传达我们承诺的设计决策。我们稍后会回到这个想法。

The game design macro has great power to communicate game design ideas. At first, we can use it to solicit feedback about the overall game’s evolving design as we’re iterating on it during preproduction. Later, once the game’s design has been locked in at the end of preproduction, we can use the macro to communicate the design decisions that we’ve committed to. We’ll come back to this idea in a moment.

游戏设计宏作为调度辅助工具

The Game Design Macro as Scheduling Aid

项目的预生产阶段是一段自由形式的时间,无法按照惯例进行安排。但如果我们想按时完成所有工作,就需要为项目的整个生产阶段制定一个时间表。游戏设计宏与我们在预生产期间的经验相结合,是制定该时间表的绝佳起点。由于它是一个宏列表,我们应该能够找到一个粒度级别我们的日程表有足够详细的内容,而不会让我们陷入列出我们需要做的众多小资产中的每一个的困境。

The preproduction phase of a project is a free-form time and can’t be scheduled conventionally. But we’ll need a schedule for the full production phase of the project if we want to get everything done on time. The game design macro, taken together with the experiences we have during preproduction, is an excellent starting point for making that schedule. Since it’s a macro list, we should be able to find a level of granularity for our schedule that has just enough detail, without bogging us down in trying to list out each and every one of the many small assets we’ll need to make.

在预生产期间,当我们编写宏时,我们还会花时间构建垂直切片,制作东西并对其进行迭代,直到它们足够好,可以称之为完成。正如我们在第 11 章中讨论的那样,这意味着我们可以收集有关我们的团队制作东西需要多长时间以及我们需要多少个迭代周期才能达到我们满意的质量水平的信息。通过跟踪我们在预生产期间的时间来获取这些信息将有助于我们制定全面生产的时间表。我们将在第 19 章中详细讨论调度技术。

During preproduction, while we’re writing the macro, we are also spending time building a vertical slice, making things and iterating on them until they are good enough to call them done. As we discussed in chapter 11, that means we can gather information about how long it takes our team to make things, and how many iterative cycles it takes us to get to a level of quality that we’re satisfied with. Capturing this information by tracking our time during preproduction will help us build a schedule for full production. We’ll talk more about scheduling techniques in chapter 19.

游戏设计宏已成定局

The Game Design Macro Is Set in Stone

游戏设计宏在预制作结束时交付,代表游戏团队创意领导对项目规模上限以及内容和结构的明确承诺。预制作结束后,不应在游戏设计宏中添加任何重要的功能或内容,除非删除其他内容。

The game design macro is delivered at the end of preproduction and represents a definitive commitment by the game team’s creative leadership to an upper limit for the size of the project, and to its content and structure. Nothing significant in terms of features or content should be added to the game design macro after the end of preproduction without taking something else out.

这意味着游戏设计宏是应对“范围蔓延”的绝佳方式,这是一个古老的游戏开发问题,开发人员对新想法感到兴奋,并在完整制作过程中将其添加到游戏设计中。范围蔓延(以及称为“功能蔓延”的范围蔓延类型)会以不受控制的方式延长项目,有时甚至会阻止项目完成。我们将在第 28 章中再次讨论功能蔓延。

This means the game design macro is an excellent way of combating “scope creep,” the age-old game development problem where developers get excited about new ideas and add them into the game’s design during full production. Scope creep—and the type of scope creep known as “feature creep”—extends a project in an uncontrolled way and can sometimes prevent it from ever being finished. We’ll look at feature creep again in chapter 28.

这并不是说在全面生产过程中设计永远不会发生变化:我们稍后会讨论在全面生产过程中我们可以(并且必须)保持灵活思考的方式。但是通过认真对待游戏设计宏观,并提醒自己它是一成不变的,我们朝着控制项目迈出了重要一步。在预生产结束后,总会出现令人兴奋的新想法,但除非我们的设计出现重大失败,否则我们应该坚持现有的东西并努力使其变得完美。我们可以将这些新想法留到下一个项目中。

This is not to say that design changes can never happen during full production: we’ll look later at the ways in which we can (and must) keep thinking flexibly during full production. But by taking the game design macro seriously, and reminding ourselves that it’s set in stone, we take a major step toward bringing our project under control. Exciting new ideas will always come along after the end of preproduction, but unless our design is failing in a major way, we should stick with what we have and work to make it superb. We can save those new ideas for our next project.

此外,由于宏仅以宏观方式指定设计,因此进行微观设计的开发人员仍然有很大的创造空间。机会是无穷无尽的:我们当然会从宏中获得约束,但正如每个优秀的设计师都知道的那样,约束会激发创造力,而不是阻碍创造力。用 Mark Cerny 的话来说:

Furthermore, because the macro only specifies the design in a macroscopic way, there is still a huge amount of room for creativity on the part of the developers doing the micro design. The opportunities are endless: we get a constraint from the macro, to be sure, but as every good designer knows, a constraint spurs creativity, rather than blocking it. In the words of Mark Cerny:

尽管你的前期制作可能已经很出色,但你仍然会在制作过程中学到一些东西。某些技术、相机、游戏玩法可能比其他的更好。因此,只要你不违反宏观设计,你就可以在制作过程中提升游戏的最新水平,并确信你不会破坏体验的连续性或一致性。14

As good as your preproduction may have been, you’ll still learn things in production. Certain techniques, cameras, gameplays, may work better than others. So, so long as you don’t violate your macro design, you can advance the state of the art in the game during production with confidence that you will not break the continuity or consistency of the experience.14

虽然在预制作结束后不应再向宏中添加任何内容(除非在非常特殊的情况下),但可以删除或移动某些内容,因为这不会对计划产生太大影响。只需更改游戏中元素的顺序,您就可能找到解决游戏设计问题的创造性方法或改进故事的方法。《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》开头的火车失事序列按时间顺序发生在游戏事件的中间,直到预制作结束后的某个时间才被移到游戏设计宏图的开头。15

While nothing should be added to the macro after the end of preproduction, except under very special circumstances, things can be removed or moved around, since that shouldn’t impact the schedule much. By simply changing the order of the elements in your game, you might find creative solutions to game design problems or ways of improving your story. The in medias res train wreck sequence that opens Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, which chronologically takes place in the middle of the events of the game, was not moved to the beginning of the game design macro chart until sometime after the end of preproduction.15

游戏设计宏是游戏设计圣经吗?

Is the Game Design Macro a Game Design Bible?

有时你会听到游戏开发者谈论“游戏设计圣经”,但要小心,并检查以确保你理解他们在说什么。他们可能在谈论一个老式的、太大而无用的游戏设计文档。或者他们可能指的是游戏设计宏:要么只是游戏设计概述,要么是整个两部分宏,包括宏图表。

You’ll sometimes hear game developers talk about a “game design bible,” but be wary, and check to make sure you understand what they’re talking about. They might be talking about an old-fashioned, too-big-to-be-useful game design document. Or they might be referring to a game design macro: either just the game design overview, or the whole two-part macro including a macro chart.

另外,请注意不要将游戏设计宏与电影、电视、漫画书和小说中使用的“编剧指南”或“故事圣经”混淆。这些是大型的世界构建文档,列出了广阔的虚构宇宙的正典、传说和基调。一个著名的例子是吉恩·罗登贝里在准备制作该系列时编写的“星际迷航:下一代编剧/导演指南” 。16

Also, be careful not to confuse the game design macro with the “writers’ guide” or “story bible” used in the worlds of film, television, comic books, and fiction. These are large worldbuilding documents laying out the canon, lore, and tone of an expansive fictional universe. A famous example is the “Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers’/Directors’ Guide” that Gene Roddenberry wrote in preparing to make the series.16

故事圣经在规划知识产权特许经营时必不可少,它们与游戏设计概述在总结故事、角色和世界方面有一些共同之处,但它们的大小和范围使它们与用于规划单个游戏项目的重点设计宏截然不同。也就是说,如果你正在开发的游戏是大型新娱乐特许经营的一部分,你和你的同事当然应该为你正在规划的新世界创建一个故事圣经。

Story bibles are essential in the planning of intellectual property franchises and have something in common with a game design overview in the way that they summarize story, characters, and world, but their size and scope make them quite different from the focused design macro used to plan a single game project. That said, if you are working on a game that is part of the creation of a major new entertainment franchise, you and your colleagues should of course create a story bible for the new world you’re planning.

您可能现在感到害怕,因为为您的游戏制定全面的计划似乎是一项艰巨的任务。在下一章中,我们将介绍一些简单实用的技术,您可以使用这些技术开始创建游戏设计宏图。

You might be feeling intimidated right now, by the seemingly gargantuan task of creating a comprehensive plan for your game. In the next chapter, we’ll look at some easy and practical techniques that you can use to get started in the creation of a game design macro chart.

  1. 1.托尔金,《JRR托尔金书信集》,177页。

  2. 1.  Tolkien, The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, 177.

  3. 2. Mark Cerny,“DICE 峰会 2002”,https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=QOAW9ioWAvE,28:51。

  4. 2.  Mark Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOAW9ioWAvE, 28:51.

  5. 3. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,28:58。

  6. 3.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 28:58.

  7. 4.Ted Price,《事后分析:Insomniac Games 的《Ratchet & Clank》》,Gamasutra,2003 年 6 月 13 日,https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131251/postmortem_insomniac_games_.php

  8. 4.  Ted Price, “Postmortem: Insomniac Games’ Ratchet & Clank,” Gamasutra, June 13, 2003, https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131251/postmortem_insomniac_games_.php.

  9. 5. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,31:54。

  10. 5.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 31:54.

  11. 6. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,31:54。

  12. 6.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 31:54.

  13. 7. Csikszentmihalyi,《流》,67页。

  14. 7.  Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, 67.

  15. 8 . Anthropy 和 Clark,《游戏设计词汇》,5。

  16. 8.  Anthropy and Clark, A Game Design Vocabulary, 5.

  17. 9 . Luhn,《最好的故事获胜》,xxv。

  18. 9.  Luhn, The Best Story Wins, xxv.

  19. 10. Schell,《游戏设计的艺术》,297。

  20. 10.  Schell, The Art of Game Design, 297.

  21. 11. Allgeier,《导演视频游戏》,#33。

  22. 11.  Allgeier, Directing Video Games, #33.

  23. 12. Brian Allgeier,“提供结构:宏文档如何确保项目按计划进行”,Directing Video Games,2017 年 8 月 10 日,http://www.directingvideogames.com/2017/08/01/provide-structure/

  24. 12.  Brian Allgeier, “Provide Structure: How Macro Documents Keep a Project on Course,” Directing Video Games, August 10, 2017, http://www.directingvideogames.com/2017/08/01/provide-structure/.

  25. 13. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,32:53。

  26. 13.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 32:53.

  27. 14. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,35:55。

  28. 14.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 35:55.

  29. 15. “以 in medias res (古典拉丁语:‘进入事物的中心’)开头的叙事作品在情节中间展开。……通常,解说被绕过,并通过对话、倒叙或对过去事件的描述逐渐填充。”“In Medias Res”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res

  30. 15.  “A narrative work beginning in medias res (Classical Latin: “into the middle of things”) opens in the midst of the plot. Often, exposition is bypassed and filled in gradually, through dialogue, flashbacks or description of past events.” “In Medias Res,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_medias_res.

  31. 16.吉恩·罗登贝瑞 (Gene Roddenberry),《星际迷航:下一代编剧/导演指南》,1987 年 9 月 8 日,https://www.roddenberry.com/media/vault/TNG-WritersDirectorsGuide.pdf

  32. 16.  Gene Roddenberry, “Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers’/Directors’ Guide,” September 8, 1987, https://www.roddenberry.com/media/vault/TNG-WritersDirectorsGuide.pdf.

 

 

18 编写游戏设计宏图

18    Writing a Game Design Macro Chart

在上一章中,我们讨论了游戏设计宏图表(游戏设计宏的电子表格部分)的内容。读完这些内容后,您可能会感到不知所措。我该如何开始为我的游戏制定这个宏大的宏观计划?我从哪里开始?

In the previous chapter, we discussed what goes into a game design macro chart, the spreadsheet part of a game design macro. Having read about it, you might be feeling overwhelmed. How can I possibly begin to put together this grand, macroscopic plan for my game? Where do I start?

别担心。首先,我会告诉你艾米·亨尼格在顽皮狗开发的一种技术,然后我会带你回顾你在构思阶段所做的工作。很快,你的游戏设计宏图的骨架就会开始显现。

Don’t worry. First, I’ll tell you about a technique that Amy Hennig developed at Naughty Dog, and then I’ll connect you back to the work that you did in the ideation phase. Soon, the bones of your game design macro chart will begin to appear.

艾米和我们的合作者们在为《神秘海域 2》《神秘海域 3》编写冗长而复杂的游戏设计宏时,从一堆不起眼的索引卡开始。艾米会查看我们关于地点、角色、游戏场景和故事情节的想法列表,并将每个想法写在索引卡上,并用颜色编码来区分这些想法,以便清晰易懂:粉色卡片代表地点,蓝色卡片代表事件,等等。

The process that Amy and our group of collaborators used to assemble the lengthy and complex game design macros for Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 began with a stack of humble index cards. Amy would look at the list of ideas that we’d had for locations, characters, gameplay set pieces, and story beats, and write each one on an index card, color-coding the ideas for clarity: a pink card for a location, a blue card for an event, and so on.

我们会把卡片放在桌子上,开始洗牌,寻找好的组合:倒塌的桥梁序列和喜马拉雅山的修道院;被逼入绝境的记者和饱受战争蹂躏的城市。很快,看起来特别契合的创意组合就会出现,我们会把它们钉在艾米办公室的软木板上(见图18.1)。渐渐地,游戏的序列开始组合在一起,经过充分的思考和讨论,整个宏观动作就出现了。

We would lay out the cards on a desk and begin to shuffle them, looking for good combinations: a collapsing bridge sequence and a Himalayan monastery; some cornered journalists and a war-torn city. Pretty soon, constellations of ideas that seemed to hang together particularly well would emerge and we’d pin them up on a cork board in Amy’s office (see figure 18.1). Gradually, sequences of the game would start to come together, and—with enough thought and discussion—whole acts of the macro appeared.

图 18.1

Figure 18.1

软木板索引卡规划,最终形成了《神秘海域 2:盗贼同盟》的游戏设计宏图。请注意,在开发阶段,Chloe Frazer 被称为“Jane”。图片来源:©2009 SIE LLC/《神秘海域 2:盗贼同盟》™。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创建和开发。

The cork board index card planning that led to the game design macro chart for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. Note that Chloe Frazer was called “Jane” at this stage in development. Image credit: ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

这种有趣、有触感的安排和重新安排想法的方法,加上艾米和团队对游戏设计和讲故事的了解,意味着我们最终能够制定出整个游戏的计划。一旦我们觉得有信心的序列出现在软木板上,我们就把它写在宏图表电子表格中。最终,我们得到了游戏设计宏图表(见图18.2),准备传递给感兴趣的各方。

This playful, tactile method of arranging and rearranging ideas, coupled with Amy and the team’s knowledge of game design and storytelling, meant that eventually we were able to figure out a plan for the whole game. As soon as a sequence that we felt confident about appeared on the cork board, we wrote it up in our macro chart spreadsheet. Eventually, we had our game design macro chart (see figure 18.2), ready to pass on to the interested parties.

图 18.2

Figure 18.2

《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》游戏设计宏图的一部分(另见附录 C)。图片来源:©2009 SIE LLC/《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》™。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创建和开发。

Part of the game design macro chart for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (see also appendix C). Image credit: ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

首先,我们会将方案展示给顽皮狗的学科负责人和团队成员,征求他们的反馈。这些人为该流程贡献了想法,并将把这个宏伟计划付诸实施,因此征求他们的意见非常重要。然后,经过更多修改后,我们会将其发送给索尼互动娱乐(顽皮狗的母公司)的制片人和执行制片人,作为“预制作结束”里程碑审查流程的一部分。

First, we’d show it to the discipline leads and team members at Naughty Dog to get their feedback. These folks had contributed ideas to the process and would put this grand plan into action, so it was important to get their input. Then, after some more revisions, we’d send it to our producers and executive producers at Sony Interactive Entertainment (Naughty Dog’s parent company), as part of our “end of preproduction” milestone review process.

您可以使用这种索引卡方法,也可以在数字文档中执行类似操作。还记得您在构思过程中在电子表格中列出的想法列表吗?这些列表是开始组装游戏设计宏的正确地方。复制粘贴您对位置、游戏玩法、故事事件和角色的想法,将它们混合搭配以寻找可以很好地协同工作的组合。很快,您就可以开始将它们组装到游戏设计宏图表的行中。

You could use this index card method, or you could do something similar in a digital document. Remember the lists of ideas that you made in a spreadsheet during ideation? Those lists are the right place to start in assembling your game design macro. Copy-paste your ideas for locations, gameplay, story events, and characters, mixing and matching them in search of combinations that work well together. Soon, you’ll be able to start assembling them into the rows of your game design macro chart.

宏观图表的粒度

The Granularity of the Macro Chart

宏图的粒度是指其细节程度。每个游戏设计师都必须决定宏图的粒度,尽量使其足够详细,但不要太详细。

The granularity of a macro chart refers to the level of detail that it has. Every game designer will have to make a decision about the granularity of their macro chart, trying to make it detailed enough but not too detailed.

较短的游戏可以有更详细的宏观图表;较长的游戏则需要较低级别的细节。您为宏观图表使用的具体细节级别由您决定,但请记住,不要陷入以后可能会改变的细节中。

A shorter game could have a more detailed macro chart; a longer game will require a lower level of detail. Exactly what level of detail you use for your macro chart is up to you, but remember, don’t get bogged down in details that might change later.

例如, 《神秘海域 2》《神秘海域 3》的宏观图表中的每一行代表大约 10 到 15 分钟的游戏时间。相比之下,在我的课堂上,学生制作一款十分钟的游戏,宏观图表中的每一行代表大约三十秒到一分钟的游戏时间。对于我的学生来说,这是一个有用的设计练习,让他们在规划时比设计更大、更长的游戏时更加细致。

For example, each row in the macro charts for Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 represent about ten to fifteen minutes of gameplay. By contrast, in my classes, where students are making a ten-minute game, each row in the macro chart represents about thirty seconds to one minute of gameplay. It’s a useful design exercise for my students to get a little more micro in their planning than they would when designing a larger, longer game.

编写宏图表时,一个好的经验法则是避免将太多不同的事件堆积到电子表格的同一行中。尽可能将离散事件分成宏中的不同行。如果您发现在某个单元格中写了一个短段落,则可能表明该行应该分成两行或更多行。

A good rule of thumb to use when writing a macro chart is to avoid piling too many different events into the same row in the spreadsheet. Break discrete events out into separate rows in the macro whenever you can. If you find that you’ve written a short paragraph in any given cell, that’s probably a sign that that row should be broken out into two or more rows.

尽量让宏观图表简洁。Brian Allgeier 建议:“宏观设计应该保持高水平,将更详细的信息留给支持文档,如故事脚本和设计文档。团队成员需要能够轻松引用它并快速了解游戏元素是如何组合在一起的。” 1

Do your best to keep the macro chart concise. Brian Allgeier advises: “The Macro Design should stay high level and leave more detailed information to supporting documents like the story scripts and design documents. Team members need to be able to easily reference it and quickly understand how the elements of the game are structured together.”1

对游戏设计宏图进行排序

Sequencing the Game Design Macro Chart

编写游戏设计宏图表使您有机会根据游戏的顺序规划游戏的流程,我们通常从三个方面考虑:游戏事件的顺序、叙述事件的顺序以及地点的顺序(您的关卡,即游戏玩法和叙述发生的空间)。

Writing a game design macro chart gives you a chance to plan out your game’s flow in terms of the sequencing of the game, which we usually consider in three ways: the sequence of gameplay events, the sequence of narrative events, and the sequencing of place (of your levels, the spaces in which both the gameplay and narrative take place).

游戏玩法排序

Sequencing Gameplay

在考虑游戏事件的顺序时,一个好的起点是游戏机制的引入顺序以及玩家如何学习它们。创造性的机会立即由此产生。假设你的角色可以跑和跳。大多数游戏会教玩家先跑后跳,但如果我们以某种方式教玩家先跳后跑,会不会感觉更新鲜、更有趣?

A good place to start when considering the sequence of gameplay events is the order in which the game mechanics are introduced and how the player learns them. Creative opportunities immediately arise out of this. Let’s say that your character can run and jump. Most games teach a player to run before they jump, but would it feel fresher and more interesting if we somehow taught the player to jump first and then to run?

当我们介绍游戏机制时,我们会将它们组合成设置,以创建有趣的游戏玩法,让玩家在整个游戏过程中保持兴趣。设置是游戏元素的集合,以引起玩家兴趣的方式排列。设置是游戏玩法的逻辑单元。一个非常简单的设置可能是一个坑,里面有一些尖刺。如果你掉进坑里,你可以重新开始关卡;如果你跳过坑,你可以继续游戏。更复杂的设置可能涉及一个载着敌人上下移动的平台,前面的路上会射出一些毒镖。你必须仔细安排你的动作,以便跳跃、击败敌人、避开毒镖并继续前进。

As we introduce our game mechanics, we combine them in setups to create the interesting variety of gameplay that will sustain the player throughout the course of the game. A setup is a collection of game elements, arranged in such a way as to create interest for the player. Setups are logical units of gameplay. A very simple setup might be a pit with some spikes in it. If you fall into the pit, you restart the level; if you jump over the pit, you can proceed through the game. A more complex setup could involve a platform carrying an enemy moving up and down, with some poison darts being shot across the path ahead. You have to time your moves carefully, so as to make the jumps, defeat the enemy, avoid the poison darts, and move onward.

通过查看《超级马里奥兄弟》世界 1-1 一开始设计精美的设置,我们可以清楚地了解什么是设置,如图 18.3所示。

We can clearly understand what a setup is by looking at the very nicely designed setup at the very beginning of Super Mario Bros. World 1–1, shown in figure 18.3.

图 18.3

Figure 18.3

《超级马里奥兄弟世界 1-1 》开头的设置。图片来源:任天堂。

The setup at the beginning of Super Mario Bros. World 1–1. Image credit: Nintendo.

这种特殊的游戏元素安排创造了一种有趣的情况,既有挑战性又没有太多危险。正如 Anna Anthropy 和 Naomi Clark 在《游戏设计词汇》中所描述的那样,这种《超级马里奥兄弟》的设置为玩家创造了一个学习机会,学习是自然、自由和有趣的。2

This particular arrangement of gameplay elements creates a playful situation that provides a challenge without too much danger. As Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark describe in A Game Design Vocabulary, this Super Mario Bros. setup creates a learning opportunity for the player, where the learning is natural, free form, and fun.2

玩家可以从下方撞击“问号”方块或“砖块”,看看会发生什么。他们可以收集蘑菇,变得更大、更强大。他们可以从侧面撞击 Goomba 怪物,受到一些伤害,或者弹到它身上并摧毁它。设计师精心设计的元素的放置安排与角色能力的设计参数(角色可以跳多远、多高、多快)有关,这样空间既不会太狭窄也不会太开阔。根据你选择在何时何地奔跑和跳跃,你可以优雅地通过这个设置,也可以陷入困境。

The player can bash into a “question mark” block or a “bricks” block from below to find out what happens. They can collect a mushroom and become big and more powerful. They can bash into the Goomba monster from the side and take some damage or bounce on it and destroy it. The placement of the elements that the designers carefully arranged has a relationship with the design parameters of the character’s abilities—how long, high, and quickly they can jump—so that the space is neither too constrained nor too open. Depending on where and when you choose to run and jump, you’ll sail through this setup gracefully or get into a pickle.

设计师创建了一系列连续的设置,随着时间的推移逐渐增加和减少游戏难度,从而形成了游戏设计师经常使用的“上升锯齿”难度模式,Ernest Adams 在其著作《游戏设计基础》中对此进行了描述。“每个游戏关卡的难度都略低于前一关结束时的难度,并且在每个关卡的过程中增加难度。……这种锯齿形状为游戏的整个过程创造了良好的节奏。” 3

Designers create sequences of successive setups to gradually increase and decrease the difficulty of gameplay over time, creating the “rising sawtooth” pattern of difficulty regularly used by game designers, and described by Ernest Adams in his book Fundamentals of Game Design. “Start each game level at a perceived difficulty somewhat lower than that at which the preceding level ended, and increase the difficulty during the course of each level as well. This sawtooth shape creates good pacing over the course of the game.”3

游戏设计师有时会犯的一个错误是过快增加游戏设置的难度。由于我们对游戏设计元素非常熟悉,并且非常擅长玩自己的游戏,所以我们倾向于直接设置一些复杂程度超出玩家能力范围的设置。使用游戏设计宏图进行系统规划是应对这种倾向的好方法,而定期与新玩家进行游戏测试可以让我们确保正确衡量游戏难度。

A mistake that game designers sometimes make is to increase the difficulty of their setups too quickly. Because we’re so familiar with the elements of our game’s design, and so skilled at playing our own game, we have a tendency to jump ahead to setups with a degree of complexity beyond what our players can handle. Methodical planning, using a game design macro chart, is a good way to counter this tendency, and regular playtesting with new players allows us to be sure that we’re gauging our difficulty correctly.

还有其他游戏顺序考虑因素。你的游戏中是否有 Boss,它们如何使用?其他特殊的游戏顺序如何融入游戏中?玩家可以在开放世界中自由移动,还是只能沿着线性路径移动?如果玩家角色可以接受任务,他们一次只能选择和接受一个任务,还是可以有多个任务?如果他们获得了金钱或经验值等资源,这些资源可以随时使用,还是只能在游戏中的关键时刻使用?当我们编写游戏设计宏图表时,我们需要对这些重要问题给出答案。

There are other gameplay sequencing considerations. Are there bosses in your game, and how are they used? How do other special sequences of gameplay fit into the game? Can the player move freely around an open world, or are they constrained to a linear path? If the player-character can accept missions, can they only choose and accept one at a time, or can they have multiple missions? If they earn a resource like money or experience points, can these be spent at any time, or only at key moments in the game? We’re invited to come up with answers to these important questions when we write a game design macro chart.

顺序叙述

Sequencing Narrative

考虑游戏的顺序时,叙事是另一个不错的起点。Mark Cerny 在 DICE 演讲中谈到了宏观图表:“你应该指望有一个相当稳固的故事,你不打算改变它。” 4随着游戏的故事变得越来越复杂和情绪化,游戏设计宏观是规划游戏故事的重要场所,这个想法在顽皮狗变得越来越重要。

Narrative is another good place to start when considering the sequencing of a game. In his D.I.C.E. talk Mark Cerny says about the macro chart: “You should count on having a pretty solid story that you don’t intend to change.”4 This idea, that the game design macro is an important place for planning the story of your game, became more and more important at Naughty Dog as the stories of our games became more complex and more emotional.

故事叙事这两个词的含义相似,但不同的人有不同的理解。我有自己的定义,我认为在谈论游戏时很有用。对我来说,叙事是一系列以某种方式联系在一起的事件的报道,以从某处开始到在某处结束的顺序呈现。它为你提供一些信息,让你可以随心所欲地处理。相比之下,故事是一种具有特别强连贯性的叙事序列,通常跟随一个或几个角色,并且这些角色身上发生的事情隐含着意义或主题。故事从某个有意义的地方开始,在某个更有意义的地方结束。总的来说,故事以一种叙事无法做到的方式向你传达了一些东西。

The words story and narrative have similar meanings but are interpreted in different ways by different people. I have my own definitions that I think are useful when talking about games. For me, a narrative is a report of events that are connected in some way, presented in a sequence that starts somewhere and ends somewhere else. It gives you some information to do with what you will. By contrast, a story is a narrative sequence that has a particularly strong coherence, usually following one or just a few characters, and with a meaning or theme implicit in what happens to those characters. The story starts somewhere meaningful and ends somewhere more meaningful. Taken as a whole, a story communicates something to you in a way that a narrative may not.

所以,对我来说,故事是叙事的一个子集。叙事比较松散,故事比较具体。对我来说,几乎所有东西都是叙事,因为思维是一种叙事机制。所以,我可能会给你讲一个故事,关于我下午过得怎么样,或者我上次玩网络游戏发生了什么,但这可能不算什么故事。如果我用人物、语气、主题、有意义的戏剧和一个特定的结局来强化我的叙述,那么它就变成了一个故事。

So, for me, story is a subset of narrative. Narrative is looser, and story is more specific. For me, almost everything is narrative, because the mind is a narrativizing mechanism. So, I might spin you a narrative about how my afternoon went or what happened in my last online game session, but it might not be much of a story. If I sharpen my narrative with characters, tone, theme, meaningful drama, and a particular conclusion, then it becomes a story.

您对故事和叙事的定义可能与我的不同,特别是如果您接受过文学理论、戏剧创作或叙事设计等特定技术领域的培训。无论您选择哪种术语,游戏设计师都能够分辨出我们谈论的叙事是一系列事件的集合,还是更像我们在小说或电影中看到的传统故事,这很有用。

Your definitions of story and narrative might be different from mine, especially if you have some training in a specific technical field like literary theory, dramaturgy, or narrative design. Whatever terms you choose, it’s useful for game designers to be able to tell when we’re talking about narrative as a collected sequence of events, or something more like the traditional story that we would find in a novel or a film.

当考虑在游戏设计宏图中对传统故事较少的游戏进行叙事排序时,游戏的叙事隐含在宏图中的游戏事件描述中。阅读宏图就像阅读游戏的叙事,因为它会随着游戏玩法的展开而展开。游戏的很多叙事都包含在玩家目标、设计目标和情感节奏栏中。

When thinking about sequencing narrative in a game design macro chart for a game that has less in the way of traditional story, the narrative of the game is implicit in the description of the gameplay events in the macro. Reading down the macro chart will be like reading a narrative about a game as it unfolds through its gameplay. A lot of the narrative of the game will be contained in the Player Goal, Design Goal, and Emotional Beat columns.

对于具有传统故事类型的游戏,您首先必须介绍您的玩家角色、他们的世界以及一两个关键关系。您可能会建立他们的一些动机、需求和目标,让他们踏上游戏之旅的原因,以及一些会在途中引起兴趣的对抗力量。或者,您也可以通过其他方式为故事创造兴趣,让玩家发现散文诗的片段,如《亲爱的艾丝特》中的故事,或发现音乐体验,如《普罗透斯》。正如我们在第 16 章中讨论的那样,并非每个有趣的故事都需要由冲突驱动。您将介绍要遇到的角色、要去的地方以及将故事引向新方向的情节点。最终,您需要通过让事件达到高潮、结局和结局来结束故事

For a game that has a traditional type of story, you first have to introduce your player-character, their world, and one or two key relationships. You might establish some of their motivations, needs and goals, a reason for them to go on a journey through your game, and some forces of antagonism that will create interest along the way. Or you might create interest for your story in some other way, by having the player uncover fragments of prose-poetry, as in Dear Esther, or discover musical experiences, as in Proteus. As we discussed in chapter 16, not every interesting story need be driven by conflict. You’ll introduce characters to meet, places to go, and plot points that send the story in a new direction. Eventually, you’ll need to wrap up your story by having the events come to a climax, a resolution, and a dénouement.

无论你的游戏是否有故事,请思考我们在第 16 章中讨论过的亚里士多德的《诗学》和弗赖塔格的金字塔的上升-下降、开始-中间-结束结构。这些简单的戏剧模型将帮助你为游戏体验带来结构。

Whether your game has a story or not, think about the rising-falling, beginning-middle-end structure of Aristotle’s Poetics and Freytag’s Pyramid that we discussed in chapter 16. Those simple models of drama will help you bring structure to the experience of your game.

像我这样的叙事游戏设计师经常被问到:“哪个先出现:游戏玩法创意,还是故事创意?”答案是两者都可以先出现,但重要的是故事片段与伴随的游戏玩法相匹配,反之亦然。我认为游戏玩法和故事之间的关系就像两个孩子在玩跳蛙游戏:第一个跳过第二个,然后第二个跳过第一个,如此反复。

Narrative game designers like me are often asked, “Which comes first: the idea for gameplay, or the idea for story?” The answer is that either can come first, but what counts is that pieces of story are matched well with the gameplay that accompanies them, and vice versa. I think about the relationship between gameplay and story as if they were two kids playing leapfrog: the first jumps over the second, then the second jumps over the first, and on and on.

游戏的每个时刻,即使是学习左右移动等非常简单的时刻,都提供了叙事机会。同样,每个故事情节都可能与游戏玩法的某些元素相匹配。不要浪费这些创意机会!游戏玩法和故事之间的紧密对应是游戏讲故事的魔力所在;通过将它们排序在一起,我们可以将游戏玩法和叙事紧密地结合在一起,形成一个和谐、共鸣的编织物。

Each moment of gameplay, even a very simple moment like learning to move left and right, presents a narrative opportunity. Similarly, every story beat might find a match with some element of your gameplay. Don’t squander these creative opportunities! A tight correspondence between gameplay and story is where the magic of game storytelling lies; in sequencing them together, we can draw play and narrative tightly into a harmonious, resonant braid.

排序位置

Sequencing Place

在对大多数类型的游戏进行排序时,您需要仔细考虑游戏玩法和故事事件发生的地点。电子游戏的关卡设计是一门迷人的艺术。精心设计的关卡是将要发生或可能发生的事件的一种空间具体化。

In sequencing most types of game, you’ll need to think through the places in which the events of the gameplay and story happen. Level design for videogames is a fascinating art. A well-designed level is a kind of spatial materialization of the events that will, or could, take place within it.

仔细考虑关卡和子关卡以及它们之间的连接方式。许多出色的游戏关卡都是由较窄的路径连接的开放区域组成的——您的游戏是否具有这种结构?游戏的每个部分有多大或多长?游戏总共有多少个地方,它们整体上如何组合在一起?它们是按线性顺序串联在一起的,有分支吗,还是围绕中心排列?老板和其他特殊游戏序列出现在哪里?

Think through your levels and sublevels and how they connect. Many great game levels are made up of open areas connected by narrower paths—does your game have that kind of structure? How large or long is each part of the game? How many places does the game have in total, and how do they fit together overall? Are they strung together in a linear order, do they branch, or are they arranged around a hub? Where do the bosses and other special sequences of gameplay appear?

游戏场景的创建很可能是团队最耗费人力(因此也是最昂贵的)的工作之一。使用游戏设计宏图来规划游戏中要访问的场景是控制游戏范围的重要步骤。此外,考虑如何在游戏中的不同场景中重复使用同一个场景可以帮助您高效工作,充分利用这些昂贵的环境资产,并可能做出最佳的创意决策。正如 Tracy Fullerton 所说:“为高潮时刻重新照亮现有环境实际上可能比创造一个全新的环境更具戏剧性。” 5

The creation of the places in which your game takes place will likely be among the most labor-intensive (and hence costly) work that your team does. Using the game design macro chart to plan the places that you’ll visit in your game is an important step in bringing the scope of your game under control. In addition, considering how you can reuse the same place for different sequences in your game can help you work efficiently, making the most of those costly environmental assets, and may lead to the best creative decisions. As Tracy Fullerton says: “Re-lighting an existing environment for the climactic moment may actually be a more dramatic decision than creating an entirely new environment.”5

排序中的对比和连续性

Contrast and Continuity in Sequencing

在对游戏中的游戏玩法、叙事和地点进行排序时,请考虑对比和连续性。是的,你希望从一件事到另一件事保持良好的连续性,但你也需要对比来创造能够吸引玩家兴趣的多样性。

In sequencing the gameplay, narrative, and places in your game, think about contrast and continuity. Yes, you want the continuity of a good flow from one thing to the next, but you also need contrast to create the variety that will hold the player’s interest.

遵循一系列轻松的探索,然后加入一些激烈的动作。在塑造一个讨人喜欢或有趣的角色后,再对该角色进行戏剧性的揭示。将宽阔的空间与狭窄的通道迷宫进行对比。这些对比会调节玩家的体验,让玩家感觉像是一次充满趣味和意义的旅程。多-少-多、顺-粗-顺、主动-被动-主动的模式是进行排序的重要基础。对比的概念部分来自 Bruce Block 的优秀著作《视觉故事》,我们曾用这本书将《神秘海域》系列中的游戏玩法和故事结合起来。6

Follow a sequence of relaxed exploration with some intense action. Follow the establishment of a character as likable or funny with a dramatic revelation about that character. Contrast a wide-open space with a labyrinth of narrow passages. These contrasts create a modulation of the player’s experience which feels like a journey rich with interest and meaning. A pattern of more-less-more, smooth-rough-smooth, active-passive-active is a great basis for your sequencing. The idea of contrast comes in part from Bruce Block’s excellent book The Visual Story, which we used to unite gameplay and story in the Uncharted series.6

完善宏观图表

Making the Macro Chart Complete

宏观图表应该包括游戏的每个部分,包括前端以及所有菜单和界面.这包括标题屏幕你的游戏、你的团队的动画标识以及您想要添加的任何其他“宣传视频”(徽标),用于显示您的出版商、创意合作伙伴、技术许可人或大学计划的名称。它包括暂停屏幕选项屏幕加载屏幕以及任何“游戏结束屏幕您想要包含的内容。它还包括一个屏幕或序列,显示学分适合你的游戏。

The macro chart should include every single part of your game, including the front end and all its menus and interfaces. This includes the title screen for your game, your team’s animating logo, and any other “bumpers” (logos) that you want to include to show the name of your publisher, creative partners, technology licensors, or university program. It includes the pause screen, options screens, loading screens, and any “game overscreens you want to include. It also includes a screen or sequence showing the credits for your game.

重申一下:所有这些都属于你的游戏设计宏观图表。当人们意识到制作所有这些必不可少、容易被忽视的游戏部分需要多长时间时,他们有时会感到震惊。最好在预制作结束时而不是项目结束时意识到这一点,因为那时还有时间规划和构建完成游戏所需的一切。

To reiterate: all these things belong in your game design macro chart. People are sometimes startled when they realize how long it’s going to take to create all these essential, easy-to-overlook parts of their game. It’s better to have this realization at the end of preproduction than at the end of the project, while there’s still time to plan and build everything needed to make the game complete.

微设计

Micro Design

我们正在进行的宏观设计工作与微观设计形成对比,微观设计是我们以后开发游戏时必须完成的所有细节工作。我们将根据宏观设计制定的框架进行微观设计。如果我们的团队规模较大,这项工作将由游戏设计师与其他学科的工匠一起完成。如果我们的团队规模较小,我们将自己完成。

This macro design work that we’re doing is contrasted with the micro design, which is all of the detailed work we will have to do later to build out our game. We’ll base our micro design on the framework laid out by the macro design. If we’re on a larger team, this work will be done by our game’s designers, working together with the artisans in the other disciplines. If we’re on a small team, we’ll do it ourselves.

微设计通常是从宏观设计中抽取一行,然后将其扩展为关卡布局、物体放置、敌人描述和行为、谜题设计和叙事机制等细节。在 20 世纪 90 年代和 21 世纪,我工作的团队会通过在纸上或 Adob​​e Illustrator 中创建详细的关卡布局图来实现这一点,但如今更常见的是在白板上进行一些快速的序列规划,然后使用占位符游戏元素直接在工具中构建块网格(白盒/灰盒/块状)关卡。更详细的支持游戏然后可以根据需要创建设计文档,通常采用流程图和列表的形式。

Creating micro design usually proceeds by taking a single line from the macro and expanding it with details about level layout, object placements, enemy descriptions and behaviors, puzzle designs, and narrative mechanisms. In the 1990s and 2000s, the teams I worked on would do this by creating detailed level layout maps on paper or in Adobe Illustrator, but today it’s more usual to do some quick sequence planning on a whiteboard, and then build blockmesh (whitebox/graybox/blockout) levels directly in the tools, using placeholder gameplay elements. More detailed supporting game design documentation, usually in the form of flowcharts and lists, can then be created as necessary.

微设计通常是在即时的基础上创建的,这样我们就不会浪费时间开发稍后会更改的细节。即时对您的团队意味着什么取决于您。通常,我们希望在微设计方面取得足够大的进展,这样我们就不会给团队的其他部分造成瓶颈,尤其是当微设计团队由于某种原因而放慢速度时。

The micro design is usually created on a just-in-time basis, so that we don’t waste time developing details that will later get changed. What just-in-time means for your team is up to you. Generally, we want to get far enough ahead with our micro design so that we don’t create a bottleneck for other parts of our team, especially if the micro design teams get slowed down for some reason.

非线性游戏和游戏设计宏观图表

Nonlinear Games and the Game Design Macro Chart

让我们讨论如何为非线性游戏创建游戏设计宏图。显然,电子表格的二维空间适合规划线性游戏,这些游戏以从 A 到 B 再到 C 的单向顺序进行。但是,宏图也可用于规划可能从 A 流向 BC 的分支游戏,或可能以 B、C 或 A 的任意顺序进行的开放世界游戏。

Let’s discuss the creation of a game design macro chart for a nonlinear game. Obviously, the two-dimensional space of a spreadsheet is good for planning out linear games, which flow in a one-way sequence from A to B to C. However, a macro chart can also be used to plan out branching games that might flow from A to B or C, or open-world games that could take place in any order of B, C, or A.

我很高兴看到我班上的学生们将宏应用于多种不同类型的游戏,具有不同类型的游戏进程。宏的优势在于它的二维空间,其中的元素可以以网格形式排列,以紧凑的方式在页面上全面列出它们,并显示它们之间的关系。

I’ve been pleased to see students in my classes adapt the macro to many different types of games, with different types of game progression. The advantage of the macro is its two-dimensional space, where elements can be gridded to list them comprehensively in a compact way on the page and to show relationships between them.

对于具有分支结构的游戏(从 A 到 B 或 C),只需将各个分支逐一列出并找到一种方法来表明它们如何链接在一起就很容易了。当然,每个分支的内容都可以描述,就像线性游戏一样。

For a game with a branching structure, A to B or C, it’s easy just to list the various branches one below the other and find a way to indicate how they link together. The content of each branch can be described, of course, just as it would be for a linear game.

对于具有开放世界结构的游戏,您可能会以任何顺序遇到关卡 A、B 和 C,您面临的挑战会稍微大一些,但通常您可以在宏观图表中将事物组织成逻辑组。一个好的方法是将宏观图表分为两部分。第一部分包含游戏机制列表及其与之交互的对象。第二部分包含地点列表以及这些地点包含的物体。将宏观图表的两部分关联起来将反映出当玩家角色获得某些能力时世界向玩家开放的方式。

For a game with an open-world structure, where you might encounter levels A, B, and C in any order, you have a slightly bigger challenge on your hands, but there are usually logical groups that you can organize things into in the macro chart. A good approach is to break the macro chart into two parts. The first part contains a list of game mechanics and the objects they interact with. The second part contains a list of places and the objects those places contain. Correlating the two parts of the macro will reflect the way that the world opens up to the player when the player-character gains certain abilities.

规划整体游戏

Planning Holistic Games

开放世界动作冒险游戏,游戏世界的部分区域由玩家角色在游戏过程中获得的能力所控制,这在前期制作期间带来了特殊的挑战。这些游戏有时被称为“整体”游戏,因为游戏设计的每个部分都与其他部分相互关联。Metroidvania 游戏是整体游戏,Zelda 系列中的大多数游戏也是如此

Open-world action-adventure games where parts of the game world are gated by abilities that the player-character earns throughout the game present a particular challenge during preproduction. These are sometimes known as “holistic” games, because every part of the game’s design is connected to every other part. Metroidvania games are holistic games, as are most games in the Zelda series.

为一款整体游戏编写游戏设计宏图是一项相当大的挑战,因为游戏中的很多微观设计需要在预制作期间完成。正如 Mark Cerny 所说,“如果后期关卡的构建很大程度上依赖于在早期关卡中学到的能力——例如,你学习滑翔机制或如何使用炸药——那么设计师将需要大量信息,才能设计出相互关联的关卡或区域。” 7

Writing a game design macro chart for a holistic game presents a considerable challenge, because a lot more of the game’s micro design needs to be completed during preproduction. As Mark Cerny says, “If later level construction depends heavily on abilities learned in earlier levels—for example, you learn a gliding mechanic or how to use explosives—then the designers will need a lot of information in order to make levels or areas which properly interrelate with each other.”7

在开始任何关卡布局之前,需要详细设计所有能力,以便我们在第 13 章中讨论的设计参数的细微变化(例如,遍历动作将带玩家角色移动的距离)不会导致之后大量关卡布局返工。对于较小的项目,这通常不是问题,但对于较大的游戏,项目的预生产阶段应适当延长,以便关卡设计团队可以对他们正在设计的机制的质量和最终效果充满信心地进入全面生产阶段。

All the abilities need to be designed in detail before the layout of any level can take place, so that small changes to the design parameters we discussed in chapter 13 (for example, the distances that a traversal action will carry the player-character) don’t lead to impossibly huge amounts of level layout rework later. For smaller projects, this isn’t usually a problem, but for larger games, the preproduction phase of the project should be extended appropriately, so that the level design team can enter full production confident in the quality and finality of the mechanics they are designing for.

游戏设计宏示例

Example Game Design Macros

我经常被要求提供游戏设计宏观图表的示例,那些我已获得许可分享的图表可以在本书的网站 playfulproductionprocess.com 上找到。

I’m often asked to provide example game design macro charts, and those that I have secured permission to share can be found on this book’s website, playfulproductionprocess.com.

我希望我已经说服了你关于游戏设计宏的想法。这不是一个非常迷人或震撼世界的游戏设计概念,但它是实用和务实的。人们常常想知道是什么秘密让顽皮狗的游戏如此出色。其中一个主要因素并不那么秘密:它只是游戏设计宏。

I hope I’ve sold you on the idea of the game design macro. It’s not a very glamorous or world-shaking game design concept, but it’s practical and pragmatic. People often wonder what the secret ingredients are that make Naughty Dog’s games so good. One of the chief ingredients is not so secret: it’s just the game design macro.

创建一个好的游戏设计宏需要一些思考、努力和经验。在我离开顽皮狗的最后时光,《最后生还者》的团队中的一部分成员消失在会议室里长达八个月之久,最后拿出了图 18.4中所示的一块写满索引卡的软木板。如果你熟悉《最后生还者》,你就能在这张图片中看到它的宏结构。团队无法想象最终会融入游戏中的每一个细节,但他们能够思考宏排序,从而让游戏体验如此震撼。

Creating a good game design macro takes some thought, hard work, and experience. Toward the end of my time at Naughty Dog, some of the team making The Last of Us vanished into a meeting room for the better part of eight months, eventually emerging with the cork board full of index cards seen in figure 18.4. If you’re familiar with The Last of Us, you’ll be able to see its macro structure in this image. The team had no way to imagine every last detail that would eventually go into the game, but they were able to think through the macro sequencing that would make the experience of playing through their game so impactful.

图 18.4

Figure 18.4

在伦敦维多利亚和阿尔伯特博物馆的“电子游戏”展览中,顽皮狗的《最后生还者》的软木板宏观规划。图片来源:《最后生还者》™ ©2013、2014 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC。《最后生还者》是 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC 的商标。由顽皮狗有限责任公司创作和开发。

Cork board macro planning for Naughty Dog’s The Last of Us, in the “Videogames” Exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Image credit: The Last of Us™ ©2013, 2014 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. The Last of Us is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

在预制作结束时,为整个游戏制定计划似乎要求很多,但请尽最大努力。相信你的直觉,专注于你在构思过程中最喜欢的想法,不要担心让你的宏观计划完美无缺。重要的是尝试创建一个你可以承诺的计划,该计划有足够的细节,你可以为全面制作制定一个好的时间表,但同时也给你留下了一些发挥创造力的回旋余地。不要想太多。一个不完美的计划比没有计划要好得多。相信你的直觉,把你的宏观计划写在电子表格里。

Making a plan for the whole of your game might seem like a lot to ask at the end of preproduction, but just give it your best shot. Trust your instincts, focus on the ideas you liked best during ideation, and don’t worry about making your macro perfect. The important thing is simply to try to create a plan that you can commit to, which has enough detail that you can make a good schedule for full production but that leaves you some wiggle room to exercise your creativity. Don’t overthink it. An imperfect plan is much better than no plan at all. Trust your gut and get your macro down in a spreadsheet.

你应该在项目预制作阶段结束前创建游戏设计微程序的初稿。这样,你就可以得到关于其长度和质量的反馈,并有时间进行至少一轮,最好是两轮迭代。来自设计同行和导师的外部反馈将帮助您在有限的时间内创建出最佳的游戏设计宏。

You should aim to create a first draft of your game design micro some time before the end of the preproduction phase of your project. That way, you can get feedback about its length and quality and have time for at least one and preferably two rounds of iteration. External feedback from design peers and mentors will help you to create the best game design macro possible in the time you have.

尝试获取有关宏观图表中问题的反馈:游戏玩法或故事流畅的地方;图表单行中发生太多不同事情的地方;宏观的任何部分都不清楚。

Try to get feedback about problems in the macro chart: places where either the gameplay or the story doesn’t flow well; places where too many different things are happening in a single row of the chart; any parts of the macro that are unclear.

特别是,尝试获取有关项目范围的反馈。创建游戏设计宏图的那一刻是控制游戏项目范围的关键机会游戏开发者很少会低估项目范围。经验不足的开发者尤其容易超出项目范围,因为他们还不了解开发一款游戏需要多长时间,以及在开发过程中会遇到多少问题和障碍。经验丰富的开发者会直观地了解游戏的计划设计是否适合可用的开发时间。与经验丰富的同事和导师核对,并尽力确保在预制作结束时项目范围得到控制。

In particular, try to get feedback about the scope of the project. The moment of the creation of the game design macro chart presents a critical opportunity to get the scope of a game project under control. It’s vanishingly rare for game developers to under-scope their projects. Less experienced developers are particularly prone to over-scoping, because they haven’t yet come to understand what a long time it takes to build a game and how many problems and obstacles they’ll encounter during development. Experienced developers come to acquire an intuitive sense of whether a game’s planned design will fit into the time available for development. Check in with your experienced peers and mentors and do your best to make sure that your project’s scope is under control by the end of preproduction.

游戏质量和游戏体验长度之间的矛盾是每种游戏开发者面临的持久挑战,也是我们应该一直讨论的问题。我相信玩家更愿意体验更短的游戏时间他们会兴奋地反复玩这些游戏,而不是只玩一次的、时间较长、质量较差的游戏。当然,这种说法的真实性或明智性取决于玩家本身,而游戏设计师的工作之一就是了解特定玩家群体的价值观和偏好。

The tension between the quality of a game and the length of the experience it provides is an enduring challenge for every type of game developer, and one that we should always be discussing. It’s my belief that players would rather have a shorter experience that they’re excited to play over and again than a longer, lower-quality experience that they’ll play only once. Of course, the truth or wisdom of that is dependent on the player in question, and it is part of a game designer’s job to understand the values and preferences of their particular community of players.

您不可能一夜之间学会创建出色的游戏设计宏,但您可以通过从一个小项目开始并尝试该技术来开始磨练您的宏技能。随着您作为游戏设计师的进步,以及您逐渐了解您喜欢制作的游戏风格的设计机会和陷阱,编写游戏设计宏将变得越来越容易,最终您将开始重视这种做法,将其视为您手艺中最重要的部分之一。

You can’t learn to create a great game design macro overnight, but you can begin to hone your macro skills by starting with a small project and trying out the technique. As you progress as a game designer, and as you get to know the design opportunities and pitfalls of the style of games you like to make, writing a game design macro will get easier and easier, and eventually you’ll come to value this practice as one of the most essential parts of your craft.

  1. 1. Brian Allgeier,“提供结构:宏文档如何确保项目按计划进行”,Directing Video Games,2017 年 8 月 10 日,http://www.directingvideogames.com/2017/08/01/provide-structure/

  2. 1.  Brian Allgeier, “Provide Structure: How Macro Documents Keep a Project on Course,” Directing Video Games, August 10, 2017, http://www.directingvideogames.com/2017/08/01/provide-structure/.

  3. 2. Anthropy 和 Clark,《游戏设计词汇》,17。

  4. 2.  Anthropy and Clark, A Game Design Vocabulary, 17.

  5. 3. Adams,《游戏设计基础》,424。

  6. 3.  Adams, Fundamentals of Game Design, 424.

  7. 4. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,33:47。

  8. 4.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 33:47.

  9. 5.私人通信,2020年5月25日。

  10. 5.  Private communication, May 25, 2020.

  11. 6. Block,《视觉故事》,234。

  12. 6.  Block, The Visual Story, 234.

  13. 7. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,34:55。

  14. 7.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 34:55.

 

 

19    调度

19    Scheduling

我们项目的预制作阶段并没有严格的计划。我们一直在设计、测试和迭代游戏的垂直部分,并结合理性和直觉来找出游戏设计的优秀核心。现在是时候换个方向了。由于我们只有有限的时间来开发游戏,因此我们需要通过计划来跟踪项目将要包含的内容。

The preproduction phase of our project hasn’t been tightly scheduled. We’ve been designing-by-making, playtesting and iterating on our game’s vertical slice, and using a mixture of rationality and intuition to smoke out the excellent core of the design of our game. Now it’s time to shift gears. Since we have a finite amount of time to work on our game, we need to keep track of what’s going to go into our project, by scheduling it.

这并不意味着我们突然从一种愉快、自由的工作方式转变为在某种官僚管理制度下辛苦工作。如果我们试图过于严格地限制创造力,创造力就会消亡。但我们确实需要找到一种方法来确保在进入项目的完整生产阶段(我们将在此阶段构建整个游戏)时不会耗尽时间。我们将在本章中介绍两种基本的游戏调度方法,它们将为您提供两全其美的方法。首先,我们将介绍一种简单但有效的调度方法,然后我将描述我最喜欢的高级方法:燃尽图。

This doesn’t mean we suddenly change from working in an enjoyable, liberated way to toiling under some bureaucratic management system. Our creativity will perish if we try to corral it too rigidly. But we do need to find a way to be confident that we won’t run out of time as we enter the full production phase of our project, where we are going to build out the whole game. The two basic methods of game scheduling that we’ll look at in this chapter will give you the best of both worlds. First, we’ll look at a simple but effective approach to scheduling, and then I’ll describe my favorite advanced method: the burndown chart.

由于这些方法将工作分解为以小时为单位的任务,因此它们最适合团队成员相对较少的较短项目。将工作分解得如此细小可能不适用于团队成员较多、规模较大、时间较长的项目——这可能会造成过多的官僚主义。一些游戏工作室将要完成的工作分解为以天甚至周为单位的任务。您必须决定哪种方法最适合您的项目。

Since these methods break down the work into tasks measured in hours, they work best for shorter projects with relatively few team members. Breaking the work down so finely may not be practical for larger, longer projects with more team members—it might just create too much bureaucracy. Some game studios schedule the work to be done by breaking it down into tasks measured in days or even weeks. You’ll have to decide what is best for your project.

如果您刚刚成为游戏设计师和制作人,或者您已经是中级水平并想提高技能,那么我建议您尝试以下方法。如果您将项目分解为两到四周的冲刺,它们也可以用于较长的项目。冲刺是敏捷开发中的一个概念,团队在相对较短的时间内朝着一组集中的目标努力,然后重新集结以评估他们的进度。

If you are just moving beyond beginner status as a game designer and producer, or if you’re already at intermediate level and want to brush up your skills, then I recommend trying out the methods below. They can also be used for longer projects if you break the project down into sprints of two to four weeks. Sprint is a concept from agile development, where a team works toward a focused set of goals for a relatively short amount of time, before regrouping to evaluate their progress.

简单调度

Simple Scheduling

首先让我们看一个非常简单的进度安排方法。因为我们写了一个游戏设计宏图表,所以我们现在有了一份文档,其中描述了游戏中所有重要的内容。宏不仅为我们的游戏提供了蓝图,还为我们提供了这是我们安排项目完整制作阶段的完美起点。现在我们知道了有多少工作要做,我们还需要知道有多少时间来完成它。

Let’s look first at a very simple scheduling method. Because we wrote a game design macro chart, we now have a document that describes everything important that’s going into our game. Not only does the macro give us a blueprint for our game, it gives us the perfect starting point for scheduling the full production phase of our project. Now that we know how much work there is to do, we also need to know how much time we have to do it.

我们需要多少人时来制作我们的游戏?

How Many Person-Hours Do We Have to Make Our Game?

专业游戏开发者需要确保他们的项目完成,并且通常受到时间和金钱的严格限制,无论他们是自己资助项目还是由其他人资助。

Professional game developers need to make sure they get their project finished and are usually rigidly bound by time and money, whether they’re funding their project themselves or it’s being funded by someone else.

游戏开发者面临的最大问题就是没有时间完成游戏。如果项目接近尾声时游戏还不够完整或不够好,我们就面临一个选择:花更多时间(和更多金钱)妥善完成游戏,或者更快地完成游戏,但牺牲质量或长度。

Running out of time to finish the game is the single greatest problem that game developers face. If the game isn’t complete enough or good enough as the end of the project gets closer, we’re faced with a choice: spend more time (and more money) to finish it properly or finish it more quickly but compromise on quality or length.

如果我们不是在项目快要结束时才意识到时间不够,而是在流程早期就意识到超出范围,那么我们就能更好地处理这个问题。本书中讨论的几乎所有工具(从项目目标到同心开发、垂直切片和游戏设计宏观图表)都是面向这一目标的。我们越早意识到超出范围,我们就能越早重新分配资源并重新确定游戏范围,这样完成的游戏仍然让人感觉完整且高质量。

We can deal with this problem in a better way if, rather than realizing that we’re running out of time near the end, we understand earlier in our process that we’re over scope. Almost every tool that we’ve discussed this book—from our project goals to concentric development, the vertical slice, and the game design macro chart—is oriented toward this goal. The sooner we can understand that we’re over scope, the sooner we can reallocate our resources and rescope our game, so that the finished game still feels complete and high quality.

游戏开发者可用的核心资源是人时。这是衡量单个人对游戏投入的专注度的单位。金钱可以等同于人时,因为一个人可以支付另一个人。将时间视为经济价值是件好事,特别是如果你不习惯评估自己的时间及其使用方式。重要的是,人们应该为他们的时间得到适当的补偿。

The core resource available to game developers is the person-hour. This is a unit that measures the undivided attention of a single person working on the game. Money can be equated with person-hours, since one can pay for the other. It’s good to see your time as financially valuable, especially if you are not used to valuing your time and the way it’s spent. It’s important that people should be compensated properly for their time.

因此,在预生产阶段结束时,计算出在全面生产期间有多少人时可用于创建游戏。您可以进行简单的计算来计算出这一点。首先,确定在项目有效完成并准备进行完善时,您将在全面生产中花费多少周时间才能使项目达到 Beta 里程碑。您需要知道您的项目有多少团队成员,以及他们每个人平均每周将在项目上花费多少人时。如果您计算出这一点,那么您将拥有:

So, as you reach the end of preproduction, work out how many person-hours you have available to create your game during full production. You can do a simple calculation to figure this out. First, decide how many weeks you will spend in full production to bring your project to the beta milestone when it is effectively finished and ready to be polished. You’ll need to know how many team members you have on your project, and how many person-hours each of them will spend on the project in an average week. If you figure this out, you’ll then have:

N =团队成员数量

N = Number of team members

P =平均每个团队成员每周工作的工时

P = Person-hours that each team member will work in an average week

W =预生产结束和全面生产结束之间的周数

W = Number of weeks between the end of preproduction and the end of full production

要计算 T(时间),即项目从预生产结束到全面生产结束所需的工时数,您可以使用以下公式:

To calculate T (for time), the number of person-hours that your project has available to take it from the end of preproduction to the end of full production, you can then use this formula:

T = N × P × W

T = N × P × W

因此,对于一个两人团队(N = 2),每个人决定每周花 10 个小时从事该项目(P = 10),预生产结束和全面生产结束之间有 6 周的时间(W = 6):

So, for a two-person team (N = 2), each of whom decides to work on the project for ten hours a week (P = 10), with six weeks between the end of preproduction and the end of full production (W = 6):

T = 2 × 10 × 6 = 120 人时

T = 2 × 10 × 6 = 120 person-hours

如果团队成员每周的工作时间不同,则必须调整计算方法,但这仍然非常简单。在我的一个班级中,对于一个二人团队,如果一名团队成员每周可以工作 8 小时,另一名成员每周可以工作 10 小时,预生产结束和全面生产结束之间有 6 周时间:

If the team members have different numbers of hours available to work each week, you’ll have to adjust the calculation, but it’s still pretty simple. For a two-person team in one of my classes, if one team member can work eight hours a week, and the other can work ten hours a week, with six weeks between the end of preproduction and the end of full production:

T = (8 + 10) × 6 = 108 人时

T = (8 + 10) × 6 = 108 person-hours

工时数为我们提供了一个具体的起点,让我们可以确定我们的游戏是否大致符合范围。简单地进行这种计算会让很多人大开眼界,对于那些在无限时间幻想下工作的人来说,这也是非常有道理的。我们马上就会看到,当我们开始列出在全面生产过程中需要做的所有事情时,这些工时很快就会被吞噬。

The number of person-hours gives us a concrete starting point for figuring out whether our game is roughly in scope. Simply doing this calculation is an eye-opener for many people, and it’s very grounding for anyone laboring under the illusion of infinite time. As we’ll see in a moment, when we start to list out all the things we need to do during full production, these person-hours will soon get gobbled up.

现在我们大概知道了我们有多少人时可供使用,我们可以开始计算出完成游戏设计宏图表中列出的所有工作需要多少人时。

Now that we know roughly how many person-hours we have at our disposal, we can start to work out how many person-hours we need to do everything listed in the game design macro chart.

最简单的时间表

The Simplest Schedule

我很喜欢简单的游戏日程安排方法。制作游戏是一件复杂的事,而我们必须做什么以及需要多长时间才能完成的实际情况变化非常快。简单的日程安排可以让我们知道我们是否大致在范围内,而不会让我们陷入大量的官僚主义。

I’m a fan of simple scheduling methods for games. Making games is a complicated business, and the reality on the ground of what we have to do and how long it takes to do it changes very rapidly. A simple schedule lets us know if we’re roughly in scope without bogging us down in a lot of bureaucracy.

最简单的计划始于在电子表格中列出我们在完整制作过程中需要完成的任务,以完成我们的游戏。我发现最好的方法是列出游戏中将要出现的对象和角色、组成游戏的环境以及我们在游戏设计宏图中提到的所有其他游戏部分。有时制作此列表就像从宏图复制粘贴到另一个电子表格一样简单。

The simplest schedule starts with a straightforward list in a spreadsheet of tasks that we need to complete during full production to finish our game. The best way that I’ve found to do this is to list out the objects and characters that will go into the game, the environments that will make up the game, and all the other parts of our game that we mention in the game design macro chart. Sometimes making this list is as simple as copy-pasting from the macro chart into another spreadsheet.

在简单的时间表中添加其他任务也很重要,这些任务与游戏中的对象、角色或环境无关,但我们知道我们必须在完整制作过程中完成,例如每周计划会议所花费的时间、编写游戏内对话脚本所花费的时间,或组织和运行游戏测试所花费的时间。

It’s also important to add other tasks to the simple schedule that don’t correspond to an object, character, or environment in the game, but that we know we’ll have to complete during full production, like the time taken for weekly planning meetings, for writing scripts for in-game dialogue, or for organizing and running playtests.

当我们开始列出制作游戏所需的任务时,很容易遇到一个问题:我们应该把列表列得有多详细(换句话说,有多详细)。我的建议是使用每个任务的完成时间来指导我们。我们稍后会详细讨论这个问题。

When we start to list out the tasks that go into making our game, it’s easy to run into a challenge around how granular—in other words, how detailed—we should make our list. My advice is to use the completion time for each task to guide us. We’ll talk more about that in a moment.

每个任务的简单计划信息

Simple Schedule Information for Each Task

现在我们在电子表格中有了任务列表,我们可以通过向每个任务添加一些信息,更进一步地接近简单的时间表。

Now that we have a list of tasks in a spreadsheet, we can move one step closer to a simple schedule by adding some information to each task.

向电子表格中添加四个列标题,如图19.1所示。在任务列表上方添加标签“任务”。在上一列添加标签“优先级”。在旁边添加“预计小时数”。在右侧添加“团队成员分配”。

Add four column headings to your spreadsheet, as shown in figure 19.1. Above your list of tasks add the label Task. One column over, add the label Priority. Next to that, add Hours Estimated. And to the right, add Team Member Assigned.

图 19.1

Figure 19.1

简单日程表的开始。

The beginnings of a simple schedule.

优先事项

Priority

首先,为每个任务设定优先级。我建议使用三个优先级。最重要的事情,你的游戏在任何情况下都离不开它们,应该设置为优先级一,优先级最高。例如,在角色动作游戏中,优先级最高的是玩家角色模型、其遍历动画(及其音频和视觉效果)、最基本的控制代码以及最简单和最重要的环境艺术部分。

First, set a priority for each of the tasks. I recommend using three levels of priority. The most important things, which your game absolutely couldn’t live without under any circumstances, should be set as priority one, the highest priority. For example, in a character-action game, that would be the player-character model, its traversal animations (and their audio and visual effects), its most basic control code, and the most simple and important pieces of environment art.

游戏需要但你可以删减的内容包括第二优先。我把次要元素放在这里,比如玩家角色用来与世界互动的动词,比如“捡起”、“扔”和“交谈”。我还列出了玩家角色将与之互动的最基本对象。这可能是要收集的硬币、要交谈的角色或要击败的敌人。我还在这里列出了环境艺术中第二重要的部分。别忘了列出音频和视觉效果组件。

The things that the game needs but that you could possibly make some cuts from are priority two. I put the secondary elements here, like the verbs that the player-character uses to interact with the world, such as “pick up,” “throw,” and “talk.” I also list the most basic objects that the player-character will interact with. That might be a coin to collect, a character to talk to, or an enemy to defeat. I also list the next-most important parts of the environment art here. Don’t forget to list the audio and visual effects components too.

在某些情况下可以削减的内容应设置为第三优先事项。如果游戏有动词就好了,但游戏并不是绝对需要的。物体和环境艺术的多样性。你想要奖励级别,但没有也可以。

The things you could possibly cut under some circumstances should be set as priority three. Game verbs that it would be nice to have, but the game doesn’t absolutely need. Variety in the objects and environment art. Bonus levels you want but could make do without.

许多游戏设计师发现,很难将他们的任何任务视为优先级 1 以外的任务。我们创造的游戏设计在我们的想象中以一种完美的晶体完整性结合在一起 — — 它们的所有部分似乎都同样重要;没有其他部分,任何部分都无法存在。我们怎么能把任何任务设置为优先级 2 或 3?

Many game designers find it very hard to consider any of their tasks to be anything other than priority one. The game designs we’ve created hang together in our imagination with a kind of perfect crystalline integrity—all their parts seem equally important; none could exist without the others. How can we set any task to priority two or three?

如果我们现在在制定第一个计划时,能够为工作设定一些优先事项,那么以后,当我们为了项目范围而不得不削减工作时,我们就会更清楚地知道哪些工作可以省去。我喜欢将这种优先级设定视为一种我自己在与项目范围对抗的策略游戏。

If we can bring ourselves to set some priorities for our work now, while we’re making our first schedule, then later, when we have to make cuts for the sake of our project’s scope, we’ll have a clearer view of what we might be able to do without. I like to see this priority-setting as a kind of strategy game I’m playing with myself against the project scope.

我确实希望能够将我认为需要的一切都融入到这个游戏中。但我相信自己是一名游戏设计师——你也应该相信——我知道如果我不得不删减某些内容,我仍然能够找到一种方法来利用我掌握的设计元素来让游戏变得更好。我见过足够多的游戏开发,知道它们并不是生来就完整的——它们是通过不断增加、减少和改进而变得完整的。所以花点时间考虑一下你的游戏绝对需要什么,以及它可以没有什么。你是否绝对需要所有这些级别或角色来讲述你的故事?如果你必须只使用一种敌人类型来让你的游戏变得有趣,那会怎样?

I sure hope that I’ll get to put everything into this game that I think it needs. But I trust myself enough as a game designer—and you should too—to know that if I have to cut something, I’ll still be able to find a way to use the design elements at my disposal to make the game great. I’ve seen enough games developed to know that they are not born complete—they become complete through an iterative process of addition, subtraction, and refinement. So take a few moments to consider what your game absolutely needs and what it could possibly do without. Do you absolutely need all those levels or characters to tell your story? What if you had to make your game fun with just a single enemy type?

当然,为任务设定优先级也会告诉你应该以什么顺序处理它们。优先级一的任务应该先完成,然后是优先级二的任务,然后是优先级三的任务。回想一下我们对同心发展的讨论,这将有助于指导你设定这些优先级。我试图在完成的列表中取得平衡,优先级一的任务占 40% 左右,优先级二的任务占 30%,优先级三的任务占 30%。这需要我充分考虑我应该按照怎样的同心顺序完成工作,以及我可能需要削减哪些任务。

Of course, setting a priority for your tasks will also tell you what order to tackle them in. Priority one tasks should be completed first, then priority two tasks, then priority threes. Think back to our discussion of concentric development to help guide your hand when setting these priorities. I try to strike a balance in the finished list of around 40 percent priority one tasks, 30 percent priority two tasks, and 30 percent priority three tasks. That requires me to think just enough about the concentric order that I should do the work in and what I might have to cut.

(您可以使用电子表格中的 SUMIF 函数来计算每个优先级的任务需要多少小时。请参阅电子表格的文档以了解如何执行此操作。您需要花几分钟才能弄清楚,但 SUMIF 是一个简单且有用的函数。)

(You can use the SUMIF function in your spreadsheet to work out how many hours’ worth of tasks you have in each priority. Refer to your spreadsheet’s documentation to see how to do this. It will take you a few minutes to figure it out, but SUMIF is an easy and useful function to learn.)

别担心:在大多数情况下,您将完成所有优先级一和优先级二的任务,以及优先级三的大部分任务。但是,尽管您已经用最好的直觉想象出合适规模的游戏设计,但您还不知道自己是否在范围内。我们正在帮助您弄清楚这一点。

Don’t worry: under most circumstances, you’ll get to complete all of your priority one and priority two tasks, and most of your priority three tasks. However, while you’ve used your best instincts to imagine a game’s design of the right size, you don’t yet know if you are in scope. We’re on the way to helping you to figure that out.

预计小时数

Hours Estimated

在这一列中,你应该列出你对完成每项任务需要多长时间(以小时为单位)的最佳估计。通过将此列中的数字相加,你将看到在全面生产期间你计划总共完成多少小时的工作。如果这个数字大于你的团队在全面生产中可用的总工时数,那么你就有麻烦了。

In this column, you should list out your best guess about how long it will take you, in a whole number of hours, to complete each task. By adding up the numbers in this column, you’ll see how many hours of work you’re planning to do in total during full production. If the number is bigger than the total number of person-hours you have available to your team for full production, you have a problem on your hands.

很难估计完成一款游戏制作任务需要多长时间。如果我们是第一次使用新游戏引擎或新硬件平台完成这类任务,那就更加困难了。很难估计需要多长时间,这就是游戏项目如此难以控制的原因。这也是 3A 和独立工作室加班的原因;这也是项目延期和假期取消的原因;这也是物理和软件受损的原因。游戏开发者的心理健康因无法控制的过度劳累而受到损害。这是一个令人讨厌的棘手问题。

It’s very difficult to estimate how long it’s going to take to complete the tasks that go into making a game. It’s doubly difficult if we’re doing tasks of that type for the first time, in a new game engine, or with a new hardware platform. The difficulty of estimating how long things will take us is the reason why game projects are so difficult to bring under control. It’s the reason for crunch at triple-A and indie studios; it’s the reason for late projects and canceled vacations; it’s the reason for the damaged physical and mental health of game developers who are being harmed by uncontrolled overwork. It’s a nasty, thorny problem.

但是,简单而巧妙的日程安排技巧可以帮到你。在“预计小时数”下,将自己限制在以下数字:1、2、4 和 8。你可以为一项任务分配一小时、两小时、四小时或八小时。九十分钟是不允许的。七小时也不行。只需 1、2、4 或 8。

However, help is at hand in the form of a simple and clever scheduling trick. Under Hours Estimated, limit yourself to these numbers: 1, 2, 4, and 8. You can give a task one hour, two hours, four hours, or eight hours. Ninety minutes is not allowed. Neither is seven hours. Just 1, 2, 4, or 8.

我从游戏设计师、教育家兼作家杰里米·吉布森·邦德那里学到了这个技巧,他教了我后面会介绍的燃尽图技巧。杰里米解释说,人们在准确估计短任务的长度方面比在较长任务方面要好。游戏开发任务的持续时间越长,我们就越无法准确估计完成任务需要多长时间。

I picked this trick up from the game designer, educator, and author Jeremy Gibson Bond, who taught me about the burndown chart technique we’ll look at later. Jeremy explained that people are better at accurately estimating the length of short tasks than they are with longer tasks. The longer the duration of a game development task, the worse we become at making an accurate guess of how long it’ll take us to complete.

为什么我们允许安排的最短任务长度是一小时?这是为了帮助控制我们列表的粒度——如果你有很多五分钟的任务,而且你确定它们都是五分钟的任务,那么就把它们放在你的日程表中,归类为一个一小时的任务。这样你的任务列表就不会变得太长,难以阅读。

Why is one hour the shortest task length we’re allowed to put down? This is to help control the granularity of our list—if you have a lot of five-minute tasks that you’re sure are five-minute tasks, put them down in your schedule grouped together under a single one-hour task. That way your task list won’t get wildly long and difficult to read.

如果我们认为一个更大的任务只需要三十分钟,但却是我们以前没有处理过的类型,那该怎么办?在计划中给它留出一个小时。如果你花了很多时间制作电子游戏,你就会知道,一个看似应该快速简单的任务,往往会花费我们预想的两倍时间才能完成,通常是因为一些意想不到的问题需要半小时的侦查工作才能解决。

What about a bigger task that we think is only going to take us thirty minutes but is of a type that we haven’t tackled before? Give it an hour in the schedule. As you know if you’ve spent any amount of time making videogames, a task that seems like it should be quick and easy will often take double the amount of time to complete that we thought it would, usually because of some unexpected problem that requires half an hour’s detective work to solve.

八小时是我们简单日程安排中允许的最长任务。由于它们会给日程安排带来不确定性,最好限制你在日程安排中安排的八小时任务的数量。一项工作可能看起来需要八个小时,但最终很容易只花掉一半的时间,甚至更可能翻倍。只有当你完全有信心一项任务可以在八小时内完成时,才使用八小时任务。那些机械重复、不需要太多创造性思维或解决问题的任务,或者那些可以在八小时后有效完成的任务,都是不错的选择。

Eight hours is the longest task that is allowed in our simple schedule. Because of the uncertainty that they introduce into the schedule, it’s better to limit the number of eight-hour tasks that you put in your schedule. A job might seem like it’s going to take eight hours but can easily end up taking half that time or, more likely, double it. Only use eight-hour tasks if you are completely confident that a task can be completed in eight hours. Tasks that are mechanically repetitive and won’t need much creative thought or problem-solving, or tasks that can be timeboxed and wrapped up effectively when the eight hours are up, are good candidates.

最好将较长的任务分解为较短的任务。如果你认为一项任务需要 16 个小时,那么可以将其分解为两个 8 小时的任务、四个 4 小时的任务或八个 2 小时的任务。

It’s best to break longer tasks down into shorter tasks. If you have a single task that you think will take sixteen hours, break it down into two separate tasks of eight hours, four tasks of four hours each, or eight tasks of two hours each.

使用 1、2、4、8 约束可以帮助我们制定一个时间表,其中的任务我们可以确信会在预计的时间内完成。它还为我们列出任务的方式提供了良好的粒度,既不会列出太多任务,也不会列出太少任务。

Using the 1, 2, 4, 8 constraint helps us to write a schedule with tasks that we can be confident we will get done in the estimated time. It also gives us a good level of granularity in the way we list our tasks, with neither too many tasks listed out nor too few.

团队成员分配

Team Member Assigned

使用此列规划哪位团队成员将负责每项任务。你应该根据谁有能力完成每项工作来分配任务,同时也要考虑谁对制作游戏的每个部分感到兴奋。在我任职顽皮狗期间,工作室总裁 Evan韦尔斯总是鼓励学科主管尽可能地将任务分配给那些对完成任务充满热情的人。我很清楚,团队成员的热情是实现最终工作卓越的直接途径。

Use this column to plan out which team member will tackle each task. You should assign the tasks based on who has the skills to do each job, but also by considering who is excited to make each part of the game. During my time at Naughty Dog, studio president Evan Wells always encouraged the discipline leads to assign tasks to people who felt passionate about doing them, whenever possible. It’s clear to me that the enthusiasm of individual team members creates a direct path to excellence in the resulting work.

同样,您可以使用电子表格中的 SUMIF 函数来持续统计分配给每个团队成员的任务小时数。当然,您应该尝试确保根据每个团队成员可以贡献的小时数公平分配工作。如果任何团队成员决定每周比其队友做更多或更少的工作,这都没问题,只要我们事先就此达成协议,以便我们共同承担的责任是双方同意且经过良好协商的。不同的人能够根据他们的生活环境和他们所承担的其他责任做出不同程度的贡献。

Again, you can use the SUMIF function in your spreadsheet to keep a running tally of the number of hours of tasks that have been assigned to each team member. Of course, you should try to make sure that you’re dividing up the work fairly, according to how many hours each team member can contribute. It’s okay if any individual team member decides to do more or less work than their teammates each week, as long as we reach a prior agreement about this, so that our shared responsibility is consensual and well-negotiated. Different people are able to make different levels of contribution, based on the circumstances of their lives and the other responsibilities they have.

使用简单的时间表进行范围界定

Scoping with a Simple Schedule

现在,我们已掌握了所有需要的信息,可以检查我们的目标是否可能实现,以及我们的项目是否可能在范围内。我们已经计算了项目从预生产结束到全面生产结束所需的工时数 T。

We now have all the information we need to check that our goals are likely to be achievable and that our project is probably within scope. We already calculated the number of person-hours, T, that our project has available to take it from the end of preproduction to the end of full production.

现在,我们可以使用电子表格中的 SUM 函数将简单计划表的“预计小时数”列中的所有时间相加,以计算我们目前计划在满负荷生产期间完成多少工作。我们把这个数字称为 W(代表工作)。

We can now use the SUM function in the spreadsheet to add up all the time in the Hours Estimated column of our simple schedule, to calculate how much work we’re currently planning to do during full production. Let’s call that number W (for work).

如果我们的工作比时间多,我们的项目就超出范围了,我们就有麻烦了!如果我们的时间比工作多,那就没问题了。

If we have more work than time, our project is over-scoped, and we’re in trouble! If we have more time than work, we’re fine.

如果 W > T 那么我们就超出范围了!

if W > T then we’re over scope!

如果 W <= T 那么我们就在范围内

if W <= T then we’re in scope

当然,这里涉及的计算并不精确——这种方法给我们一个最佳猜测,如果 W 比 T 大不到 10% 左右,我们可能仍在范围内。但如果 W 明显大于 T,我们可以肯定我们超出了范围。我们要么需要招募更多团队成员,要么延长全面制作的时间以增加 T,要么必须从游戏中削减一些功能和内容以减少任务数量并降低 W。这意味着要回到游戏设计宏观图表,看看我们可以放弃什么。

The calculations involved here are inexact, of course—this method gives us a best guess, and if W is greater than T by less than 10 percent or so, we might still be in scope. But if W is significantly larger than T, we can be certain that we are over scope. We either need to bring on more team members or increase the duration of full production to increase T, or we must cut some features and content from our game to reduce the number of tasks and decrease W. That means going back to the game design macro chart and seeing what we can do without.

如果 W 比 T 小很多,那么我们要么有时间在游戏中加入更多内容,要么可以利用额外的时间来完善游戏。但更​​常见的情况是,当人们制定他们的第一个计划时,W 大于 T——有时大很多——我们必须缩小游戏的范围。有时简单的决定就可以让事情回到范围之内。只需削减一个级别,并将其部分战略性地移动到另一个级别,就足够了。有时在游戏设计宏图中重新制定计划的工作更难。

If W is much smaller than T, then either we have time to include some more things in our game, or we can use the extra time for polish. But it’s much more common that, when people make their first schedule, W is larger than T—sometimes much larger—and we have to reduce the scope of our game. Sometimes simple decisions can bring things back into scope. Just cutting one level, and strategically moving parts of it to another level, might be enough. Sometimes the job of reworking the plan in the game design macro chart is harder.

这就是项目范围界定的本质。这个过程是无可争议的。不管你有多喜欢你的游戏设计宏图,如果你的简单日程安排告诉你,你没有时间去做所有的游戏,那么你必须找到一个更好的计划。

This, right here, is the essence of project scoping. There’s no arguing with this process. No matter how much you love your game design macro chart, if your simple schedule tells you that you don’t have time to make all that game, then you have to find a better plan.

活在否认中、计划加班或希望事情进展比你预想的更快都是非常不明智的。活在否认中显然是不理智的。希望事情进展比你预想的更快是不现实的,每个有经验的游戏开发者都知道这一点。计划加班要复杂得多,但很容易导致我们在第 15 章中讨论过的那种加班。

Living in denial, planning to just put in overtime, or hoping that things will go more quickly than you estimate is very unwise. Living in denial is clearly irrational. Hoping that things will go more quickly than you estimate is unrealistic, as every experienced game developer knows. Planning to put in overtime is more complicated but easily leads to the kind of crunch we discussed in chapter 15.

如果你确实打算通过延长工作时间将项目纳入范围,请记住,人们可以连续长时间工作的周数非常有限,而且生产力损失和倦怠很快就会随之而来。正如莎拉·格林·卡迈克尔(Sarah Green Carmichael)在《哈佛商业评论》上发表的文章中所说,我在第 15 章中提到过,该文章有研究支持:“即使你喜欢你的工作,并且自愿长时间工作,你在疲劳时也更容易犯错。……工作太辛苦,你也会忽视大局。研究表明,当我们倦怠时,我们更容易迷失在琐碎的事情中。……过度工作的故事实际上是收益递减的故事:继续过度工作,你会逐渐在越来越无意义的任务上更加愚蠢地工作。” 1

If you do plan to bring your project into scope by working longer hours, bear in mind that the number of consecutive weeks that people can work long hours is very limited, and that productivity loss and burnout quickly ensue. As Sarah Green Carmichael says, backed by research, in her article for the Harvard Business Review that I mentioned in chapter 15: “Even if you enjoy your job and work long hours voluntarily, you’re simply more likely to make mistakes when you’re tired. Work too hard and you also lose sight of the bigger picture. Research has suggested that as we burn out, we have a greater tendency to get lost in the weeds. The story of overwork is literally a story of diminishing returns: keep overworking, and you’ll progressively work more stupidly on tasks that are increasingly meaningless.”1

另一个需要明确项目范围的原因是未来的不确定性,以及每个项目因不可预见的事件(如健康状况不佳、家庭紧急情况、软件许可证过期或硬件损坏)而损失的几天或几周时间。至关重要的是,当我们进入项目的关键最后三分之一时,当我们试图将游戏的所有线索与最后几个重要的设计决策结合在一起时,我们绝不能筋疲力尽、脾气暴躁和动力不足,因为加班的人很快就会变得这样。我们需要在项目结束时保持良好的身心健康,这样我们才能做出正确的决定,让游戏取得好成绩。

Another reason to scope a project well is the uncertainty of the future, and the days or weeks that every project loses to unforeseen events like ill health, family emergencies, expired software licenses, or broken hardware. Crucially, when we come to the critical last third of the project, when we’re trying to draw all the strands of the game together with the last few important design decisions, we must not be exhausted, bad tempered, and demotivated, as crunching people quickly become. We need to arrive at the end of the project with good physical and mental health, so that we can make the right decisions and have the game turn out well.

讽刺的是,当人们出于热情而尝试制作一款超出他们人力所能制作范围的游戏时,他们往往最终会制作出一款糟糕的游戏,或者根本不是游戏。范围确定通常归结为一个简单的选择:你可以制作一款没人想玩的容易被遗忘的大型游戏,或者你可以制作一款人们喜欢、记住并乐于反复玩的小型游戏。

Ironically, when people’s passion drives them to try to make a game of greater scope than they have the person-hours to make, they often end up making a bad game, or no game at all. Scoping often boils down to a simple choice: you can make a forgettable larger game that no one wants to play, or you can make a smaller game that people love, remember, and enjoy playing over and over again.

使用简单的时间表跟踪项目

Tracking a Project Using a Simple Schedule

您可以使用我们建立的简单时间表来跟踪您的项目,只需在列表中勾选任务即可完成整个生产过程,如图19.2所示。每次完成一项任务时,请使用电子表格中的删除线格式将该行从列表中划掉。

You can use the simple schedule we’ve built to track your project as you move through full production by simply checking tasks off the list, as shown in figure 19.2. Each time you complete a task, use the strikethrough formatting in your spreadsheet to cross that row off the list.

图 19.2

Figure 19.2

从简单的日程表中划掉任务。

Striking tasks off a simple schedule.

如果您还将已完成任务的预计小时数更改为零,那么这将更新您使用 SUM 和 SUMIF 进行的任何计算,包括每个优先级、团队成员以及总共剩余的总小时数。

If you also change the Hours Estimated to zero for the completed tasks, that will update any calculations you’ve made using SUM and SUMIF, for the total hours remaining for each priority, team member, and in total.

但是用这种简单的方法跟踪进度可能会有风险。有些星期,事情会比预期的要好,你会提前完成计划。其他星期,事情会进展缓慢,你会落后。如果你有一个工具可以帮助你确定你是领先还是落后,那不是很好吗?好消息:你可以有一个,它被称为燃尽图。

But tracking your progress with a method this simple can be risky. Some weeks, things will go better than expected, and you’ll race ahead of schedule. Other weeks, things will go slow, and you’ll fall behind. Wouldn’t it be great if you had a tool to help you work out whether you’re ahead or behind overall? Good news: you can have one, and it’s called a burndown chart.

燃尽图

The Burndown Chart

Ken Schwaber 是一名软件开发人员和产品经理,他帮助制定了敏捷开发框架 Scrum。Ken 发明了燃尽图作为调度工具,帮助 Scrum 团队预测项目进程,并于 2000 年首次在他的网站上描述了燃尽图。2

Ken Schwaber is a software developer and product manager who helped formulate the agile development framework Scrum. Ken invented the burndown chart as a scheduling tool to help Scrum teams predict the course of their projects, and he first described them on his website in 2000.2

我在南加州大学游戏项目任教期间,曾看到燃尽图帮助一百多个项目顺利完成。我亲眼目睹雄心勃勃的游戏开发者们在短短几周内,仅仅通过观察图表上的一条线,就实现了自己的梦想,而没有让自己精疲力竭。

During my time teaching in the USC Games program, I have seen burndown charts help over one hundred projects reach successful completion. I have watched as ambitious game developers have realized their dreams, without burning themselves out, simply by watching a line on a graph over the course of a few weeks.

燃尽图以图形方式表示 (a) 游戏完成前还剩下哪些工作要做、(b) 平均完成工作的速度有多快,以及 (c) 时间是否不够。因此,在制作电子游戏的复杂创意过程中,它对于帮助我们掌握项目范围非常有用,因为其中涉及许多不确定因素和未知因素。

A burndown chart creates a graphical representation of (a) the work left to do on your game before it’s finished, (b) how quickly you’re getting work done on average, and (c) whether you’re going to run out of time. As such, it is extremely useful for helping us to get a handle on our project scope amid the uncertainties and unknowns involved in the complex creative process of making a videogame.

从头开始设置燃尽图可能具有挑战性,但您可以在网上找到许多示例和模板,包括本书的网站 playfulproductionprocess.com。许多在线项目管理工具都提供自动燃尽图系统,使燃尽图更易于使用。

Setting up a burndown chart from scratch can be challenging, but you can find many examples and templates online, including on this book’s website, playfulproductionprocess.com. Many online project management tools offer an automatic burndown chart system, making burndown charts much easier to use.

使用燃尽图

Using a Burndown Chart

燃尽图通常包含两部分:(a)电子表格或表格,其中输入有关项目任务的数据;(b)信息图,我们可以一眼看出我们是否有可能实现我们的里程碑。

A burndown chart usually has two parts: (a) a spreadsheet or table, where data about the project tasks is entered, and (b) an infographic, where we can see at a glance whether we’re likely to hit our milestone.

输入有关项目任务的数据与创建我们在上一节中制作的简单时间表非常相似。我们在电子表格或表格中填写了我们必须在该项目阶段或冲刺中完成的任务列表。(如果项目阶段超过四周,我们可以将其分为较短的冲刺。)我们为每个任务分配优先级,使用与我为我们的简单时间表描述的完全相同的标准,旨在大致均匀地分配优先级一、二和三的任务。我们估计完成每个任务需要的小时数,并且我们只分配任务长度值为 1、2、4 或 8。我们将每个任务分配给团队成员,尝试公平地分配工作,并符合每个团队成员可以为此冲刺投入项目的时间。大多数燃尽图都会向我们显示每个优先级的任务小时数以及分配给每个团队成员的任务小时数。

Entering the data about the project tasks is a lot like creating the simple schedule that we made in the previous section. We fill out the spreadsheet or table with a list of the tasks we have to complete in this project phase or sprint. (If a project phase is longer than four weeks, we can divide it up into shorter sprints.) We give each task a priority, using exactly the same criteria I described for our simple schedule, aiming for a roughly even split between priority one, two, and three tasks. We estimate the number of hours that we think each task will take to complete, and we only assign task lengths with values of 1, 2, 4, or 8. We assign each task to a team member, trying to apportion the work fairly, and in line with the time that each team member can commit to the project for this sprint. Most burndown charts will show us how many hours of tasks we have in each priority and assigned to each team member.

燃尽图的设置是为了让它知道我们计划开始冲刺的日期。在图 19.3的示例中,冲刺将于 7/20(7 月 20 日——您可以在第八行中看到此日期)开始。此示例燃尽图针对为期两周的冲刺设置,从 7 月 20 日到 8 月 2 日。

The burndown chart is set up so that it knows the date when we plan to start the sprint. In the example in figure 19.3 the sprint is due to start on 7/20 (July 20—you can see this date in the eighth row down). This example burndown chart is set up for a two-week sprint, from July 20 to August 2.

图 19.3

Figure 19.3

燃尽图电子表格示例。图片来源:Jeremy Gibson Bond、Richard Lemarchand、Peter Brinson 和 Aaron Cheney。

An example burndown chart spreadsheet. Image credit: Jeremy Gibson Bond, Richard Lemarchand, Peter Brinson, and Aaron Cheney.

随着冲刺的推进,我们会更新燃尽图,以说明完成每个列出的任务还剩下多少工作要做。我们通过查看日期找到与今天日期相对应的列(同样,在图19.3的示例中,位于第八行)。此燃尽图设置为我们可以每天更新,并且仅在 7 月 21 日和 7 月 22 日更新。

As we move forward through the sprint, we update the burndown chart to say how much work we have left to do to complete each of the listed tasks. We do this by finding the column that corresponds to today’s date, by looking along the dates (again, in the eighth row down, in the example in figure 19.3). This burndown chart is set up so that we can update it every day, and it was only updated on 7/21 and 7/22.

当我们沿着今天日期的列向下工作时,我们会查看最左列中列出的每项任务。如果我们已经完成了该任务的一些工作,并且现在我们认为剩余的工作时间比我们最初估计的要少,我们会在该任务的同一行中以及与今天日期对应的列中插入我们对剩余工作时间的新的最佳猜测。有些人选择在更新剩余工作时间时坚持 1、2、4、8 的限制,而有些人则放宽限制以使用任何整数。如果任务已完成,我们会在电子表格的相应单元格中输入零。

As we work down the column for today’s date, we look across at each of the tasks listed in the leftmost column. If we’ve done some work on that task, and now we think there are fewer hours than our original estimate remaining to do, we plug in our new best guess about how many hours are remaining in the same row as that task, and in the column corresponding to today’s date. Some people choose to stick with the 1, 2, 4, 8 restrictions when updating their hours remaining, and some loosen the restriction to use any whole number. If a task is complete, we put a zero into the spreadsheet in the corresponding cell.

这就是燃尽图的妙处。燃尽图并不关心我们本周在某项任务上完成了多少工作——它只关心还剩下多少工作要做。这并不是说你不应该记录你每周完成了多少工作,以防止你工作太辛苦而精疲力竭,但燃尽图不是记录的地方。

This is where part of the brilliance of the burndown chart comes into play. The burndown chart doesn’t care about how much work we did on a task this week—it only cares how much work there is left to do. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t keep a record of how much work you do each week, to prevent you from working too hard and getting burned out, but the burndown chart is not the place to keep that record.

信息图表

The Infographic

更新完今天的电子表格后,我们就可以查看燃尽图的其他部分了。这是一张信息图,可以帮助我们了解我们是否有望在冲刺结束前完成所有工作,或者是否落后了。

Once we’ve updated the spreadsheet for today’s date, we’re ready to look at the other part of the burndown chart. This is an infographic that will help us know whether we’re on track to get everything done before the end of the sprint or whether we’ve fallen behind.

燃尽图信息图通常看起来像图 19.4中那样。这是图 19.3中电子表格的信息图,它显示了几个关键信息。

A burndown chart infographic usually looks something like the one in figure 19.4. This is the infographic for the spreadsheet in figure 19.3, and it shows several key pieces of information.

图 19.4

Figure 19.4

燃尽图信息图示例。图片来源:Jeremy Gibson Bond、Richard Lemarchand、Peter Brinson 和 Aaron Cheney。

An example burndown chart infographic. Image credit: Jeremy Gibson Bond, Richard Lemarchand, Peter Brinson, and Aaron Cheney.

在我们的示例中,背景中有一个浅灰色区域,一组并排的垂直条和一条对角线。您可以看到,水平轴沿着底部标记了我们之前看到的相同日期。纵轴表示在完成燃尽图中的每个任务之前剩余的工作小时数。图 19.5仔细查看了我们的信息图,这次带有一些解释性标签。

In our example, there is a pale gray area in the background, a group of vertical bars side by side, and a diagonal line. You can see that the horizontal axis is labeled along the bottom with the same dates that we saw earlier. The vertical axis is a representation of the number of hours of work remaining before we complete every single task in the burndown chart. Figure 19.5 takes a closer look at our infographic, this time with some explanatory labels.

图 19.5

Figure 19.5

带注释的燃尽图信息图示例。图片来源:Jeremy Gibson Bond、Richard Lemarchand、Peter Brinson 和 Aaron Cheney。

An example burndown chart infographic, annotated. Image credit: Jeremy Gibson Bond, Richard Lemarchand, Peter Brinson, and Aaron Cheney.

这些条形图显示了每个团队成员需要完成的总工作小时数。(在本例中,只有两名团队成员。)您可以看到,随着任务被标记为正在进行或已完成,这些条形图随着我们沿着横轴向右移动而变短。

The bars show the total number of hours of work that each team member has on their plate. (In this example, there are just two team members.) You can see those bars get shorter as we go along the horizontal axis to the right, as tasks are marked as underway or completed.

灰色背景显示剩余工作的总小时数。它在横轴上任何给定点的高度都等于团队成员条形图高度的总和。随着我们完成项目并将任务标记为完成,灰色背景将以阶梯状图案向下并向右穿过图表。最终,当我们完成所有工作时,团队成员的条形图和灰色背景的阶梯将到达底部,其中垂直剩余工作小时轴等于零。

The gray background shows the total number of hours of work left to do. Its height at any given point along the horizontal axis is equal to the heights of the team members’ bars combined. As we go through the project, marking tasks as complete, the gray background will march down and to the right across the graph in a stairstep pattern. Eventually, when we’ve completed all the work, the bars for the team members and the stairs of the gray background will reach the bottom, where the vertical Work Hours Remaining axis is equal to zero.

现在我们来谈谈那条对角线,因为它是信息图上最重要的东西。这条线表示了我们的工作速度与剩余工作量的对比。线到达横轴的位置,即纵轴等于零的位置,向我们展示了燃尽图预测我们可能完成所有任务的日期。

Now let’s talk about that diagonal line, because it’s the most important thing on the infographic. This line is an expression of the rate at which we’re working, compared to how much work there is left to do. The place where the line reaches the horizontal axis, where the vertical axis is equal to zero, shows us the date on which our burndown chart predicts that we are likely to complete all our tasks.

我先让大家思考一下。燃尽图知道已经过去了多少时间(它有一个引用今天日期的公式),也知道我们到目前为止总共完成了多少工作。它还知道我们还剩下多少工作要做。因此,该图表可以进行计算以预测未来,以向我们展示如果我们继续以大致相同的速度工作,我们什么时候可能完成所有工作。它会平均出我们做得更好的几周(完成更多工作)和做得不尽如人意的几周(完成较少工作)。线条接触图表底部的日期可以让我们很好地猜测我们何时会完成工作。

I’ll let that sink in for a moment. The burndown chart knows how much time has passed—it has a formula that references today’s date—and it knows how much work we’ve managed to get done so far in total. It also knows how much work we have left to do. So, the chart can do a calculation to project into the future to show us when we are likely to get everything done by if we keep working at roughly the same rate we’ve been working so far. It averages out our better weeks, when we got more done, and our slow weeks, when we got less done. The date where the line touches the bottom of the graph gives us a pretty good guess about when we’re going to be done.

这意味着,随着我们经历一个冲刺阶段,甚至整个项目阶段,我们可以持续了解平均而言我们是落后于计划还是提前于计划。然后,我们可以对项目范围做出明智的决定。我们是否需要进一步缩小范围?(这时,我们为每项任务设定的优先级就变得非常有用。)我们是否应该让更多人加入团队?我们是否可以采取其他措施(尽早行动,而不是推迟行动)来确保我们有时间将所有事情完成得完美无缺?

That means that as we move through a sprint or even a whole phase of the project, we can know on an ongoing basis whether we’re behind schedule or ahead of schedule, on average. We can then make informed decisions about the scope of our project. Do we need to reduce our scope further? (That’s when the priorities that we set for each task become very useful.) Should we bring more people onto the team? Are there other steps we can take—acting earlier, rather than later—to ensure that we have the time to get everything done to a good level of polish?

图 19.6中,你可以看到图 19.419.5几天后出现的同一张燃尽图信息图。两位团队成员都设法完成了一些工作,但他们的工作速度明显放缓。你可以看到,灰色背景中的阶梯向右移动时变得浅了很多。也许每个队友在工作中都遇到了意想不到的问题,导致每项任务花费的时间比预期的要长得多,或者也许他们生活中的其他事情阻止他们有太多时间来完成项目。

In figure 19.6 you can see the same burndown chart infographic a few days after figures 19.4 and 19.5. Both team members have managed to get some more work done, but their rate has slowed significantly. You can see that the stair steps in the gray background get a lot shallower as they head to the right. Maybe each teammate faced unexpected problems in the work that made each task take a lot longer than expected, or perhaps something else in their lives prevented them from having much time to work on the project.

图 19.6

Figure 19.6

几天后的同一张燃尽图信息图。图片来源:Jeremy Gibson Bond、Richard Lemarchand、Peter Brinson 和 Aaron Cheney。

The same example burndown chart infographic, a few days later. Image credit: Jeremy Gibson Bond, Richard Lemarchand, Peter Brinson, and Aaron Cheney.

现在,这条线不再触及信息图的底部。这意味着,在这个冲刺期间应该完成的所有工作不太可能完成。如果我们在线到达信息图右侧时查看纵轴,我们可以看到,如果团队继续以相同的平均速度工作,那么在冲刺的最后一天 8 月 2 日将剩下大约 12 个小时的工作时间。

Now the line no longer touches down at the bottom of the infographic. That means it’s not likely that all the work due to get done during this sprint will get done. If we look over to read the vertical axis at the point when the line reaches the right side of the infographic, we can see that if the team keeps working at the same average rate, there will be about twelve hours of work remaining on 8/2, the last day of the sprint.

这个团队现在必须制定计划,让项目重回正轨。他们的项目目前超出了本冲刺的范围。他们可能需要从冲刺中削减一些任务。他们可以再等几天,看看他们的工作效率是否会有所提高。也许他们高估了接下来几个任务所需的时间,他们的平均工作效率会再次提高。尽管如此,他们应该开始制定计划,看看可以削减哪些任务,让项目重回正轨。

This team now has to make a plan to bring the project back on track. Their project is currently over scope for this sprint. They’re likely to need to cut some tasks from the sprint. They could wait a couple more days to see if their working rate somehow increases. Perhaps they’ve overestimated the amount of time that the next few tasks will take, and their average working rate will increase again. Nonetheless, they should start to make a plan for what they can cut to get them back on track.

决定哪些可以删减

Deciding What Can Be Cut

几乎每个游戏项目在全面制作期间都会遇到范围问题。削减功能和内容以使游戏回到范围之内是每个游戏设计师必须学习的关键技能。当我们决定削减什么时,优先级较低的任务是我们的首选。在设定优先级时,我们仔细考虑了游戏的设计,然后开始弄清楚我们可以放弃什么。(请注意,根据我们构建项目的方式,我们可能会完全从游戏中削减某些内容,或者我们可能只从当前冲刺中削减某些内容,并可能将它们包含在未来的冲刺中。)

Almost every game project runs into scoping problems during full production. Cutting features and content in order to bring a game back into scope is a key skill that every game designer must learn. When we’re deciding what to cut, the lower-priority tasks are our first candidates. Having thought through our game’s design when we were setting priorities, we began to figure out what we could possibly do without. (Please note that, depending on how we’ve structured our project, we might be completely cutting things from the game, or we may only be cutting things from the current sprint and could possibly include them in a future sprint.)

然而,并不是每个低优先级的任务都很容易被删减。有些任务比其他任务更容易被删减。一些相对低优先级的任务实际上可能通过与游戏其他部分的关系而牢牢地融入游戏设计中,而其他任务可能与整体设计更加独立。正如 Mark Cerny 最近提醒我的那样:“这里重要的是,你要知道哪些部分可以删除,哪些不能删除。如果场景是叙事或角色发展所必需的,那么它就不能被删除……因此,不断审查项目状态并根据必须保留的内容调整设计非常重要。这样,你仍然可以在开发后期进行调整,而不会损害游戏。”每种类型的游戏都有自己的考虑因素,即哪些可以轻松删除,哪些必须保留,随着你的游戏设计实践的发展,你会更善于辨别一件事和另一件事。

However, not every low-priority task will be easy to cut. Some will be more cuttable than others. Some relatively low-priority tasks might actually be firmly cemented into the design of the game by their relationship with other parts of the game, and others might be more independent of the overall design. As Mark Cerny recently reminded me: “What’s important here is that you be aware which portions can be removed and which cannot. If the locale is needed for narrative or character progression, it can’t be removed so continuously reviewing project status and adjusting the design with knowledge of what has to be kept is quite important. That way you’ll still be able to make adjustments late in development without doing harm to the game.” Every type of game has its own considerations around what can easily be cut and what must remain, and as your game design practice develops, you’ll get better at discerning one thing from the other.

在燃尽图中重新安排

Rescheduling in a Burndown Chart

当我们意识到当前冲刺(燃尽图涵盖的项目周期)的范围过大,并决定要削减哪些任务时,我们应该从图表中删除削减的任务。最好的方法是用删除线格式在电子表格中标记任务,并将其“预计小时数”减为零。(在某些燃尽图中,删除一行会破坏图表,我希望能够看到削减的内容;删除线可以实现这一点。)这将从燃尽图正在进行的计算中删除任务,并使线条进一步向左下垂,因为现在在冲刺结束前要做的工作更少了。

When we realize that we’re over-scoped for the current sprint (the period of the project covered by the burndown chart) and have decided what we’re going to cut, we should remove the cut tasks from the chart. The best way to do this is to mark the task in the spreadsheet with strikethrough formatting and reduce its Hours Estimated to zero. (In some burndown charts, deleting a row will break the chart, and I like to be able to see what was cut; strikethrough achieves that.) This will remove the tasks from the calculations that the burndown chart is making and should make the line touch down further to the left, because there is now less work to do before the end of the sprint.

如果你发现自己严重低估了任务所需的时间,或者在继续之前需要完成一些你没有预料到的新任务,那么你就需要做出选择。通常,将任务添加到燃尽图或在冲刺期间增加预估小时数,因为这会影响计算。您可以继续工作,直到完成您低估的任务,将其小时数设置为零,并从冲刺中削减足够多的其他任务,让您回到正轨。不过,这让您盲目行事。通常最好在周末开始新的冲刺,并制定更好的任务列表和更好的估计。

If you discover that you’ve grossly underestimated the time needed for the tasks, or that you need to do new tasks you hadn’t anticipated before you can proceed, then you have a choice to make. It is generally not good to add tasks to a burndown chart or increase the Hours Estimated numbers during the middle of a sprint, because it can throw off the calculation. You could just keep working until you finish the tasks you underestimated, setting their hours to zero, having cut enough other tasks from the sprint to get you back on track. This leaves you flying blind, though. It is generally better to start a new sprint at the end of the week, with a better list of tasks and better estimations.

燃尽图是一种现成的计算工具。它不是确切了解未来的方式,但它是一种非常强大的工具,可以让我们更好地了解在完成游戏的过程中可能发生的事情。根据我的经验,游戏开发者(包括我!)并不擅长预测工作何时完成。燃尽图中隐藏的数学知识让我们能够很好地掌握进度。我从未发现过一种像燃尽图一样有效的调度方法,尤其是在安排相对较短的项目或短时间的工作时。

The burndown chart is a ready-reckoning device. It’s not a way of knowing the future for certain, but it is an incredibly powerful tool for becoming better informed about what is likely to happen as we work to complete our game. In my experience, game developers (including me!) are not great at predicting when work will be completed. The mathematics tucked away inside a burndown chart give us an excellent handle on our progress. I’ve never found a scheduling method that works as well as the burndown chart, especially for scheduling relatively short projects or short sprints of work.

非常感谢 Jeremy Gibson Bond,他开发了这些示例所基于的原始燃尽图,并教会了我如何使用这个宝贵的工具。你可以在他的优秀著作《游戏设计、原型设计和开发简介》中找到更多关于燃尽图用法的见解。3(为了充分披露,我写了序言!)

Many thanks to Jeremy Gibson Bond, who developed the original burndown chart that these examples are drawn from, and who taught me how to use this valuable tool. You can find more insight into the use of burndown charts in his excellent book Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development.3 (In the interests of full divulgence, I wrote the foreword!)

燃尽图营造信任和尊重的氛围

Burndown Charts Create an Atmosphere of Trust and Respect

生产方法和调度工具有时会让人感到压抑。就我个人而言,当我觉得自己的表现受到无情的审查时,我永远不会发挥出最好的水平。优秀的项目经理会使用有助于个人开发人员自信工作的方法来管理团队,并且避免建立阻碍开发人员感到被信任和尊重的制度。

Production methods and scheduling tools can sometimes feel oppressive. Personally, I never do my best work when I feel like my performance is being scrutinized in an unfeeling way. Good project managers run teams using methods that help individual developers to work confidently, and they avoid setting up systems that prevent developers from feeling trusted and respected.

因为燃尽图只记录了我们还有多少工作要做,而不是我们已经做了多少工作,所以它从来不像是用来检查团队成员每周投入了多少时间。如果团队领导觉得有人没有履行他们对项目的承诺,那就是一个需要以自己的方式解决的特殊问题。但大多数游戏开发者都是善意的、认真的,并且对从事创造性工作充满热情。

Because a burndown chart only records how much work we have left to do, rather than how much work we’ve done, it never feels like it’s being used to check up on how many hours team members are putting in each week. If a team’s leadership has a feeling that someone isn’t living up to the commitment they made to the project, that’s a special problem that needs addressing in its own way. But most game developers are well-intentioned, conscientious, and excited to do creative work.

让员工发挥出最佳水平的方法是信任他们,并通过尊重他们来表明这种信任。相信某人每周都投入了时间,即使他们似乎没有取得多大进展,也是一种尊重。燃尽图是一种调度工具,它表明了对团队中开发人员的尊重,并因此建立了信任。

The way to get the best out of people is to trust them and to demonstrate that trust by showing them respect. To believe that someone has put in their hours each week, even if it seems like they didn’t make much progress, is to show them respect. The burndown chart is a scheduling tool that demonstrates respect to the developers on a team and builds trust as a consequence.

我在这里给出了两种安排项目的方法,其中一种方法比较简单,另一种比较复杂。对于刚开始掌握对于那些面临如何更好地控制时间的挑战,以及正在学习承担确定项目范围的责任的人来说,这些简单的方法是一个很好的起点。

I’ve given you two approaches to scheduling a project here, one of them simple and one of them more complex. For creative people who are just starting to get to grips with the challenge of bringing their time under better control, and who are learning to take responsibility for scoping their projects, these simple methods are a good place to start.

掌握本章讨论的基础知识后,您还需要学习更多关于安排数字游戏项目的知识。大型团队的专业制作人经常使用复杂的调度系统,您可能想要了解甘特图,它用于跟踪任务之间的依赖关系。您可以在克林顿·基思 (Clinton Keith) 的《敏捷游戏开发:构建、播放、重复》和希瑟·麦克斯韦尔·钱德勒 (Heather Maxwell Chandler) 的《游戏制作工具箱》等书籍中找到有关项目调度的高级想法。

Once you have mastered the basics discussed in this chapter, there is more to learn about scheduling a digital game project. Professional producers on large teams often use complex scheduling systems, and you might want to learn about Gantt charts, which are used to track dependencies between tasks. You can find advanced ideas about project scheduling in books like Agile Game Development: Build, Play, Repeat by Clinton Keith and The Game Production Toolbox by Heather Maxwell Chandler.

您还可以查看软件项目管理软件包(如 Asana、Basecamp、HacknPlan、Jira Software、Monday 和 Trello)中包含的调度工具。Meredith Hall 在她的 Gamasutra 文章“选择游戏开发项目管理工具”中讨论了这些工具以及其他内容。4可以在线找到适用于敏捷团队的低成本或免费项目管理工具,例如 opensource.com 上列出的“适用于敏捷团队的 7 大开源项目管理工具”。5

You could also look at the scheduling tools included with software project management packages like Asana, Basecamp, HacknPlan, Jira Software, Monday, and Trello. Meredith Hall discusses these tools, and more besides, in her Gamasutra article “Choosing a Project Management Tool for Game Development.”4 You can also find low-cost or free project management tools for Agile teams online, like the “Top 7 Open Source Project Management Tools for Agile Teams” listed on opensource.com.5

我认为游戏开发团队中的每个人都应该参与管理团队的时间,而不仅仅是制作人和项目经理。我们制作游戏所花的时间与我们有趣、反复的创作过程密不可分。如果每个人都认真地参与并展望未来,那么我们将共同确保以能够实现项目目标的方式运行项目。

It’s my belief that everyone on a game development team should be involved in managing the team’s time, not just producers and project managers. The time that we take to make a game is inextricably bound up with our playful, iterative, creative process. If everyone participates in looking ahead thoughtfully, then together we will ensure that we are running our project in a way that achieves our project goals.

无论你采用哪种日程安排方法,我都祝你好运。尝试尽早弄清楚你的项目何时超出范围,并在全面生产过程中继续关注范围。保持你的方法面向充满信任和尊重的团队文化,并尽可能少地使用官僚主义来跟踪项目的现实情况。如果你这样做,你将履行有效制作人的一项关键工作职责:帮助你的队友尽可能好地完成他们的工作。

Whatever scheduling methods you adopt, I wish you luck. Try to figure out as early as you can when your project is over scope and continue to keep an eye on scope as you move forward through full production. Keep your methods oriented toward a team culture filled with trust and respect, and on tracking the realities of the project with as little bureaucracy as possible. If you do so, you will be fulfilling a key job responsibility of an effective producer: helping your teammates to do their jobs as well as they possibly can.

  1. 1. Sarah Green Carmichael,“研究结果表明:长时间工作对个人和公司都会产生不利影响”,《哈佛商业评论》,2015 年 8 月 19 日,https: //hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for-people-and-for-companies 。

  2. 1.  Sarah Green Carmichael, “The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies,” Harvard Business Review, August 19, 2015, https://hbr.org/2015/08/the-research-is-clear-long-hours-backfire-for-people-and-for-companies.

  3. 2. “什么是燃尽图?”,敏捷联盟,2020 年 12 月 12 日访问,https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/burndown-chart/

  4. 2.  “What Is a Burndown Chart?,” Agile Alliance, accessed December 12, 2020, https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/burndown-chart/.

  5. 3. Bond,《游戏设计简介》,227。

  6. 3.  Bond, Introduction to Game Design, 227.

  7. 4. Meredith Hall,“选择游戏开发的项目管理工具”,Gamasutra,2018 年 6 月 29 日,https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MeredithHall/20180629/321013/Choosing_A_Project_Management_Tool_For_Game_Development.php

  8. 4.  Meredith Hall, “Choosing a Project Management Tool for Game Development,” Gamasutra, June 29, 2018, https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MeredithHall/20180629/321013/Choosing_A_Project_Management_Tool_For_Game_Development.php.

  9. 5. “敏捷团队的 7 大开源项目管理工具”,Opensource.com,2020 年 1 月 13 日,https://opensource.com/article/18/2/agile-project-management-tools

  10. 5.  “Top 7 Open Source Project Management Tools for Agile Teams,” Opensource.com, January 13, 2020, https://opensource.com/article/18/2/agile-project-management-tools.

 

 

20 项里程碑评论

20    Milestone Reviews

游戏文化中充满了我所说的评论社区,它们存在于电子游戏创作和娱乐的各个层面。专业游戏评论员发表评论,为游戏购买者提供购买决策参考。游戏玩家在评论聚合和游戏分发网站上发布用户评论。社交媒体名人在视频直播中玩游戏时谈论游戏。出版商会评审他们付费开发的游戏项目,出版商和其他利益相关者通过多种不同方式向开发团队提供反馈。游戏开发团队会对正在进行的项目进行内部评审。评审过程内置于我们在本书中一直讨论的设计-开发-游戏测试-分析-设计的迭代周期中。(这是“分析”部分。)例如,团队中的每个人都会在构建游戏的各个部分时不断评审自己的工作,我们将在第 23 章中讨论这一点。

Game culture is full of what I call communities of review at every level of the creation and enjoyment of videogames. Professional game reviewers publish reviews that inform game buyers’ purchasing decisions. Game players publish user reviews on review aggregation and game distribution sites. Social media personalities talk about games as they play them live in a video stream. Publishers review game projects that they’re paying to have developed, and there are many different ways that publishers and other stakeholders give feedback to a development team. Game development teams hold internal reviews of their in-progress projects. A process of review is built into the iterative cycle of design-develop-playtest-analyze-design that we’ve been discussing throughout this book. (It’s the “analyze” part.) For example, everyone on a team constantly reviews their work as they build out their parts of the game, as we’ll discuss in chapter 23.

在本章中,我们将重点介绍在整个项目的重要里程碑上进行的那种项目范围的评审。我们将研究一种评审类型,它将游戏开发团队(或团队的某些成员,包括最资深的成员)与团队外部的一群人聚集在一起,他们负责查看游戏并提供一些指导建议。

In this chapter, we’ll focus on the kind of project-wide review that happens at major milestones throughout a project. We’ll look at a type of review that brings together the game development team (or certain members of the team, including its most senior members) with a group of people from outside the team who look at the game and give some steering advice.

何时进行里程碑评审

When to Run Milestone Reviews

在我们有趣的生产过程中,里程碑评审会在以下主要里程碑处进行:

In our playful production process, milestone reviews happen at these major milestones:

  • 预制作结束
  • The end of preproduction
  • Alpha 里程碑
  • The alpha milestone
  • Beta 里程碑
  • The beta milestone

这些里程碑提供了很好的暂停和全面审查工作的时间点。预生产结束时,当垂直切片、游戏设计宏和时间表的可交付成果到来时,是查看正在实现的游戏的绝佳时机。通常可以很清楚地看出是否已经出现了强大的设计并正在向前发展,或者游戏的核心设计是否仍需要一些解决。我们将在以后的章节中讨论 alpha 和 beta 里程碑。项目完成后还有一种特殊的审查,即项目后审查。我们将在第 36 章中讨论它。

These milestones offer good points to pause and review the work in a comprehensive way. The end of preproduction, when the deliverables of vertical slice, game design macro, and schedule arrive, is an excellent moment to look at the game that is materializing. It’s often very clear whether a strong design has emerged and is barreling forward, or if the core design of the game still needs some figuring out. We’ll look at the alpha and beta milestones in future chapters. There’s also a special kind of review that happens when the project is complete, the post-project review. We’ll look at that in chapter 36.

对于较长的项目,如果每个里程碑之间的间隔超过几周,我们应该在这些里程碑之间进行额外的评审。根据我的经验,游戏开发团队每三四个月进行一次项目范围的评审通常很有帮助,有助于确保一切按计划进行。在某些情况下,例如游戏作为实时服务,您应该在游戏发布后继续举行里程碑评审会议,讨论游戏玩家社区的反应,以及游戏设计随着补丁和更新而不断发展的情况。

On longer projects, where there are more than a few weeks between each milestone, we should hold additional reviews between these milestones. In my experience, it’s usually helpful to a game development team to have a project-wide review every three or four months, to help make sure things are staying on track. In some cases, such as games-as-live-service, you should continue to hold milestone review meetings beyond the game’s release, to discuss the responses of the game’s community of players and as the game’s design continues to evolve with patches and updates.

内部和外部里程碑评审

Internal and External Milestone Reviews

本章将重点介绍外部里程碑评审会议,这些会议邀请团队外部人员就游戏发表意见,但在每个重要里程碑,整个团队也应该聚在一起讨论项目。通过内部里程碑评审会议,团队可以就游戏和开发过程中哪些方面做得好以及需要解决哪些问题达成更多共识和明确意见。每个个人或团队也将更深入地了解队友对游戏的看法。

This chapter is going to focus on external milestone review meetings that bring people in from outside the team to give their opinions about the game, but at each major milestone, the whole team should also get together to discuss the project with each other. By having an internal milestone review meeting, the team can gain additional consensus and clarity about what is working well in the game and in their development process, and what problems they need to address. Each individual or group will also come to understand their teammates’ perspectives on the game in a deeper way.

如果团队规模太大,无法进行所有人都在场的内部评审,那么可以举行多次会议,包括学科会议(艺术组、工程组等)和由各个学科成员组成的跨学科小组。学科重点的深度专业化和学科观点的协作、协同思维在每个里程碑都非常有价值。

If a team is too large to have an internal review with everyone present, then multiple meetings could take place, with discipline meetings (the art group, the engineering group, and so on) and with interdisciplinary groups made up of members from every discipline. The deep specialization of a discipline focus and the collaborative, synergistic mindset of an interdisciplinary viewpoint are both very valuable at each milestone.

举行里程碑回顾

Holding a Milestone Review

举行里程碑评审需要开发团队,尤其是其领导层做好一些准备。如果项目进展顺利,那么为实现每个里程碑所做的工作自然会与评审所需的工作相吻合。提交工作以供评审的人员需要做一些额外的工作,但可能不需要做太多。

Holding a milestone review requires some preparation from the development team and from their leadership in particular. If a project is running well, the work that has been done to meet each milestone naturally dovetails with the work needed for the review. Some additional work will be needed from the people who will present the work for review but maybe not much.

里程碑评审从留出一些时间进行评审开始。对于一款小游戏,这可能只需要十五到二十分钟。对于一款大游戏,评审可能需要一整天甚至更长时间。选择一个舒适的会议室或教室,配备良好的视频和音频,并确保有水可用——评审中会有很多谈话,口干舌燥。然后,开发团队(或他们的领导)将准备展示工作。我们稍后会看看他们应该准备什么。

A milestone review begins with setting some time aside for the review. For a short game, this could be as little as fifteen or twenty minutes. For a big game, it could take a whole day or longer. Choose a comfortable meeting room or classroom with good video and audio, and be sure to have water available—there’s going to be a lot of talking in the review, and mouths will get dry. Then, the development team (or their leaders) will prepare to present the work. We’ll look at what they should prepare in a moment.

接下来,应该召集一组人来审查这项工作。这个审查小组将就游戏的新兴设计中哪些行得通、哪些行不通提出建议。在游戏行业中,里程碑审查小组通常几乎完全由项目利益相关者组成,即出资创建游戏的人。我们将在下面的“向项目利益相关者介绍”中更详细地讨论这一点。

Next, a group of people to review the work should be assembled. This review group will give advice about what’s working and what isn’t in the emerging design of the game. Very often in the game industry, a milestone review group will be made up almost entirely of project stakeholders, the people who are putting up the money to create the game. We’ll look at this in greater detail under “Presenting to Project Stakeholders,” below.

工作室负责人通常会出席,其他领导层成员和工作室其他开发人员也会出席。工作室外部人员也可能参与其中——董事会成员或顾问。如果评审游戏的人本身就是游戏开发者,并且了解游戏制作过程的来龙去脉,评审过程会发挥最佳效果。在开发多款游戏的班级中,团队的同学、讲师和学生助理都是优秀的评审小组成员。

The heads of the studio will usually be present, as will other members of leadership and other developers from around the studio. People from outside the studio might be brought in too—board members or consultants. The review process works best if the people reviewing the game are game developers themselves, who know the ins and out of the game-making process. In a class where multiple games are being developed, the team’s classmates, instructor, and student assistants make excellent review group members.

当里程碑评审的日期和时间到来时,每个人都会开会,评审过程就开始了。典型的里程碑评审会议将进行如下操作:

When the date and time of the milestone review arrives, everyone meets, and the review process begins. A typical milestone review meeting will run something like this:

  1. 开发人员简要介绍了他们的游戏并总结了他们的项目进展。
  2. The developers briefly introduce their game and summarize where they’re at with the project.
  3. 该游戏在评审小组面前进行演示或试玩。
  4. The game is demoed or playtested in front of the review group.
  5. 如果合适,审查小组的一名高级成员将开始提供笔记。
  6. If appropriate, a senior member of the review group starts the process of giving notes.
  7. 其他评论小组成员也纷纷提供笔记,对游戏做出评论。他们之间可能会展开热烈的讨论。
  8. The other review group members pitch in with their notes, making remarks about the game. Lively conversation between them might ensue.
  9. 审查时间结束后,游戏开发者会感谢小组的反馈。
  10. When the time allocated for the review is up, the game developers thank the group for their feedback.
  11. 在审查多个项目的环境中,例如季度业务会议或游戏开发课程,我们会转到下一个项目。
  12. In a setting where multiple projects are being reviewed, like a quarterly business meeting or a game development class, we move on to the next project.

让我们更深入地了解这个过程。

Let’s dive more deeply into this process.

1. 开发人员简要

介绍他们的游戏并总结他们的项目进展情况。

1.  The developers briefly

introduce their game and summarize where they’re at with the project.

  1. 团队通常会使用演示幻灯片来帮助他们以有效的方式介绍他们的游戏。
  2. The team will typically use presentation slides to help them introduce their game in an effective way.
  3. 介绍项目的当前名称。如果它只是一个暂定名称,请说明。
  4. Introduce the project by its current name. If it’s only a working title, say so.
  5. 团队描述了他们认为谁是他们游戏的受众。他们可以使用我们在第 7 章中创建的简单定位声明,“我们游戏的潜在受众是……
  6. The team describes who they consider to be the audience for their game. They could use the simple positioning statement we created in chapter 7, “The possible audience for our game is
  7. 团队简要描述项目当前的状态。他们可能会描述最近完成的一项主要工作,或者他们当天要展示的内容。如果这项工作与里程碑相对应,他们会说明他们是否达到或超过了里程碑的要求。如果他们没有达到里程碑,他们会说缺少什么。
  8. The team briefly describes the state of the project as it currently stands. They might describe a major piece of work that was recently completed, or the content of what they’re presenting that day. If the work corresponds to a milestone, they say whether they met or exceeded the requirements of the milestone. If they didn’t hit the milestone, they say what’s missing.
  9. 他们描述游戏中已知的所有问题,包括他们知道会给评审小组带来麻烦的任何大问题。根据问题的性质,这可以帮助评审小组决定是否提供建议或不在已知问题上浪费时间。
  10. They describe any known issues with the game, including any big problems that they know will jump out at the review group. Depending on the nature of the problem, this can help the review group decide whether to give advice or to not waste time on a known issue.
  11. 如果合适的话,他们会说从审查小组得到什么样的反馈会很有用。
  12. If appropriate, they say what kind of feedback it would be useful to receive from the review group.
  13. 评论的初始介绍部分尽可能简短——我们希望尽快开始了解游戏。
  14. This initial presentation part of the review is kept as short as possible—we want to start looking at the game as quickly as we can.

2. 该游戏在评审小组面前进行演示或测试。

2.   The game is demoed or playtested in front of the review group.

  1. 根据游戏及其状态,游戏团队将通过亲自玩游戏来展示游戏,或者要求游戏测试员在评审小组面前玩游戏。
  2. Depending on the game and its state, the game team will either show the game by playing it themselves, or they’ll ask for a playtester to play it in front of the review group.
  3. 通常情况下,最好在游戏处于相对早期阶段时进行试玩,因为新玩家可能会遇到一些已知问题。此外,最好在游戏有大量内容需要团队确保审核小组看到时进行试玩。
  4. It’s often better to demo the game when it is in a relatively early state, with known problems that new players will stumble over. It’s also better to demo the game when there is a lot of content that the team wants to be sure that the review group sees.
  5. 有时游戏会有转折或惊喜结局,主持人可能不愿意透露,因为担心“破坏”体验。虽然游戏的最终受众应该避免被剧透,但评论小组不应该这样做。他们来这里是为了提供帮助,所以需要了解游戏结构的一切,以便进行良好的分析。
  6. Sometimes a game will have a twist or surprise ending that the presenters might be reluctant to reveal for fear of “spoiling” the experience. While the game’s eventual audience of players should be shielded from spoilers, the review group should not be. They’re there to help, and so need to know everything about the structure of the game in order to give a good analysis.
  7. 首次看到一款游戏时,评论小组可能会选择将评论保留到最后。然而,随着评论小组在连续的评审会议中对某款游戏越来越熟悉,他们可能会在游戏仍在演示时就开始“现场”发表评论。
  8. When seeing a game for the first time, a review group may choose to hold back its comments until the end. However, as a review group gets more familiar with a particular game over successive review meetings, it may begin to offer their comments “live” while the game is still being demoed.
  9. 这种实时评论方式更适合某些类型的游戏。如果实时评论会影响评论小组其他成员对游戏的看法(例如,在特别紧张或情绪激动的游戏中),那么最好等到游戏播放完毕后再发表评论。
  10. This kind of live commenting is more appropriate for some types of games than others. If the live comments affect the way that other members of the review group receive the game—for example, in a particularly tense or emotional game—then it’s best to hold comments until after the game has been shown.

3. 如果合适,审查小组的一位资深成员可以带头做笔记。

3.   If appropriate, a senior member of the review group leads off in the process of giving notes.

  1. 在工作室,在场的最资深的非团队成员(工作室总裁或设计总监)可能会首先给出他们的笔记。在课堂环境中,讲师可能会这样做。这可以为讨论定下基调,或立即确定任何(至少对资深成员而言)特别值得讨论的主要问题。
  2. At a studio, the most senior non-team member present—the studio president or a design director—might give their notes first. In a classroom setting, the instructor might do the same. This can be useful to set a tone for the discussion or to immediately identify any major issues that seem (to the senior member, at least) particularly worthy of discussion.
  3. 此时,资深评审小组成员可以利用这个机会,使用“夹层”(第 6 章)和“我喜欢、我希望、如果……会怎样?”(第 12 章)来树立对设计师的信心、尊重他们的工作,以及同事间的建设性批评。
  4. This moment presents an opportunity for the senior review group member to use “sandwiching” (chapter 6) and “I Like, I Wish, What If ?” (chapter 12) to set a tone of confidence in the designers, respect for their work, and collegial, constructive criticism.
  5. 资深成员的发言应相对简短,概括他们所看到的重大问题。目标是尽快让其他评审小组成员展开对话,甚至辩论。
  6. The senior member should keep their remarks relatively brief, framing the big issues they see. The goal is to open things up for conversation and even debate among the other review group members as quickly as possible.

4. 其他评论小组成员纷纷发表自己的评论,对游戏做出评价。他们之间可能会展开热烈的讨论。

4.   The other review group members pitch in with their notes, making remarks about the game. Lively conversation between them might ensue.

  1. 评审小组成员可能会自发地开始发言,或者会举手让游戏团队或会议主持人点名。
  2. The review group members might either start speaking spontaneously or will raise their hand to be called on by the game team, or whoever is leading the meeting.
  3. 关于游戏的讨论通常很自然地展开。评论小组的成员会根据彼此的评论进行讨论,有时也会持不同意见。当评论小组的成员意见不一致时,以及当一些(礼貌、尊重的)辩论随之而来时,这会非常有成效,他们会深入探讨他们在游戏中看到的问题。
  4. The conversation about the game often develops quite naturally. Members of the review group will build off—and sometimes disagree with—each other’s comments. It can be very productive when members of the review group disagree with one another, and when some (polite, respectful) debate ensues, digging deeply into the issues that they see in the game.
  5. 演示团队的一名成员做笔记(或在审查小组的允许下进行录音或录像)以记录审查小组的评论。
  6. One of the presenting team members takes notes (or, with the permission of the review group, makes an audio or video recording) to capture the review group’s comments.
  7. 开发人员可能会重新展示评论小组特别感兴趣的游戏部分。如果游戏很短,他们可能会再次展示整个游戏。这可以引发对游戏这一部分或那部分的深入讨论。
  8. The developers might reshow sections of the game that the review group are particularly interested to discuss. If the game is short, they might show the whole thing again. This can prompt in-depth discussion about this or that part of the game.
  9. 在讨论过程中,游戏设计师很快就能清楚地了解评审小组对他们作品的优点和缺点的看法。他们还会发现,他们的游戏中是否存在某些方面是不同的人有不同的看法。
  10. During the discussion, the game’s designers quickly get a quite clear picture of the strengths and weaknesses of their work, as the review group sees it. They also find out if there are any aspects of their game that different people see in different ways.

5. 评审时间结束后,游戏开发者会感谢小组的反馈。

5.   When the time allocated for the review is up, the game developers thank the group for their feedback.

  1. 对于游戏开发者来说,感谢评审小组付出的时间、精力和专业知识是一种常见的礼貌。
  2. It’s a matter of common courtesy for the game developers to thank the review group for their time, attention, and expertise.
  3. 此举还为会议画上了良好的句号,并为评审小组下次评审游戏搭建了一个隐性的桥梁。
  4. This act also creates a good end cap to the session and builds an implicit bridge to the next time that the review group will look at the game.

6. 在审查多个项目的环境中,例如季度业务会议或游戏开发课程,我们会转到下一个项目。

6.   In a setting where multiple projects are being reviewed, like a quarterly business meeting or a game development class, we move on to the next project.

  1. 在我的课堂上,我们会将可供复习的时间平均分配给各个项目,以保证公平。有些游戏玩起来会比其他游戏花费更长的时间,我们会根据具体情况来处理。
  2. In my classes, we divide up the time we have available for review evenly among the projects, in the interests of fairness. Some games take longer to play than others, and we deal with this on a case-by-case basis.
  3. 如果时间到了,开发团队和评审小组成员可以在会议之外互相跟进,但还有更多有用的对话。
  4. The development team and review group members can follow up with each other outside the meeting if time is up but there’s more useful conversation to be had.
  5. 我们花在观察每款游戏上的时间通常会随着开发的进展而增加。
  6. The amount of time we spend looking at each game usually increases as development progresses.

i. 在前期制作结束时,我们会花 15 分钟查看每款游戏。我们查看的垂直片段通常很短,可能只需要两三分钟就可以玩完。这给我们留下了充足的讨论时间。

i.  At the end of preproduction, we spend fifteen minutes looking at each game. The vertical slices we’re looking at are often quite short and may only take two or three minutes to play through. This leaves us plenty of time for discussion.

ii. 在 alpha 和 beta 阶段,我们会花更多时间观察每款游戏,至少增加到 30 分钟。

ii.  At the alpha and beta milestones, we spend progressively longer looking at each game, increasing to at least thirty minutes.

皮克斯智囊团

The Pixar Braintrust

此流程或其变体适用于大多数类型的里程碑评审。它部分受到 Ed Catmull 和 Amy Wallace 在其著作《创意公司》中讨论的 Braintrust 流程的启发。世界各地的创意社区中都可以找到此方法的变体。1

This process, or some variation on it, works well for most types of milestone review. It’s partly inspired by the Braintrust process discussed by Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace in their book Creativity, Inc. Variations of this method can be found in creative communities around the world.1

皮克斯智囊团的一个有趣而重要之处在于,它对正在接受评审的创意人员没有直接的权威:它是一个同行评审小组,来自不同项目的导演、故事讲述者和艺术家聚集在一起,以同事的方式评审正在进行的作品,但没有权威给出必须采取行动的注释。团队需要听取他们收到的反馈并决定如何处理它。

An interesting and important thing about the Pixar Braintrust is that it has no direct authority over the creative people whose work is being reviewed: it is a peer review group, where directors, storytellers, and artists from different projects come together to review works in progress in a collegial way, without having the authority to give notes that must be acted upon. It’s up to the team to listen to the feedback they’re given and decide how to address it.

与此同时,接受评审的创意人员确实有责任解决发现的问题。如果同样的问题在连续的里程碑会议上反复出现,那么这是一个危险信号,表明项目存在更大的问题,最终需要解决,可能是取消项目或更换领导层。

At the same time, the creative people whose work is being reviewed do have a responsibility to solve the problems that are identified. If the same problems come up over and over again in successive milestone meetings, that’s a red flag about a bigger problem with the project that will eventually need to be addressed, maybe by canceling the project or changing its leadership.

关于智囊团,《创造力公司》杂志评论道:“智囊团最重要的特点是能够分析电影的情感节奏,而其成员本身不会情绪化或产生防御心理。” 2智囊团还说道,

Of the Braintrust, Creativity, Inc. says that “its most important characteristic was an ability to analyze the emotional beats of a movie without any of its members themselves getting emotional or defensive.”2 It goes on to say,

由于智囊团的结构,被告知存在明显缺陷或需要修改的痛苦被最小化。导演很少会采取防御措施,因为没有人会利用职权或指挥电影制作人该怎么做。电影本身——而不是电影制作人——受到密切关注。你不是你的想法,如果你过于认同你的想法,当它们受到挑战时,你会生气。要建立一个健康的反馈系统,你必须从等式中去除权力动态——换句话说,你必须让自己专注于问题,而不是人。3

Because of the way the Braintrust is structured, the pain of being told that flaws are apparent or revisions are needed is minimized. Rarely does a director get defensive, because no one is pulling rank or telling the filmmaker what to do. The film itself—not the filmmaker—is under the microscope. You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged. To set up a healthy feedback system, you must remove power dynamics from the equation—you must enable yourself, in other words, to focus on the problem, not the person.3

很多时候,游戏在里程碑评审中得不到好的反馈,这是因为游戏团队的权力动态:工作室总裁或发行商想要某些功能或内容,如果得不到,他们可能会大发雷霆。特别是在商业环境中,游戏团队的领导层通常必须处理这种类型的评论,我们将在下面的“向项目利益相关者介绍”中讨论。

Too often, games don’t get good feedback at a milestone review, because of a power dynamic around the game team: a studio president or publisher wants certain features or content and might raise hell if they don’t get it. Especially in a commercial context, a game team’s leadership will often have to deal with reviews of this type, as we’ll discuss in “Presenting to Project Stakeholders,” below.

因此,我们在开发游戏时,越能将皮克斯智囊团的思维模式带入到游戏评审过程中,效果就越好。从评审过程中消除权力斗争使我们能够专注于游戏的客观品质以及游戏是否符合项目目标。

So, the more that we can bring the Pixar Braintrust mindset into our process of reviewing our games as we work on them, the better. Removing power struggles from the review process allows us to focus on the objective qualities of the game and the ways in which it is or isn’t meeting its project goals.

怎样的笔记才是好的笔记?

What Makes a Good Note?

注释是一种反馈,您会发现这个术语在许多不同的创意领域都有使用。我给你的关于你的作品的注释,无论是电子游戏、剧本还是绘画,都是我对你正在进行的工作的看法、想法、感受和理论的一些评论,我希望你会觉得有用。根据我是你的同事、老板还是朋友,我的注释可能会有一定的风格或力量。优秀的游戏设计师总是在寻找可以帮助他们改进游戏的好注释。

A note is a piece of feedback, and you’ll find this term is used in many different creative fields. A note that I give you about your work, whether it’s a videogame, a screenplay, or a painting, is some remark of mine about my perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and theories about your work in progress, that I hope you’ll find useful. Depending on whether I’m your peer, your boss, or your friend, my notes might have a certain flavor or strength. Great game designers are always on the lookout for the good notes that will help them to improve their games.

里程碑评审小组会提供大量笔记,几乎涵盖他们在游戏中看到的所有东西。他们可能会提到他们喜欢的东西。他们可能会问一些不清楚的问题,或者提出让好东西变得更好的建议。他们可能会指出他们认为是游戏中的弱点或问题。有些笔记很有帮助,充满了让工作变得更好的方法的见解,而有些则没有。那么,什么是好的笔记呢?

A milestone review group gives lots of notes, about almost anything that they see in the game. They might mention things that they like. They might ask a question about something that wasn’t clear or give a suggestion to make something good even better. They might identify things that they perceive as weaknesses or problems in the game. Some notes are helpful, full of insight into ways to make the work better, and some are not. So, what makes a good note?

直接

Directness

首先,便条应该直截了当。它应该诚实地传达它必须提供的有用信息。夹心和“我喜欢,我希望,如果……会怎样?”都是以友好和尊重的方式组织便条的极佳技巧,但不要拐弯抹角:说出你想说的话。

First, a note should be direct. It should honestly deliver the useful information it has to give. Sandwiching and “I Like, I Wish, What If ?” are both excellent techniques for framing a note in a kind and respectful way, but don’t beat around the bush: say what you have to say.

大多数人都重视诚实,并渴望诚实。但诚实会带来困难。你可能不确定别人听到你的想法会有什么反应,而完全的诚实可能是残酷的。它可能伤害、激怒或打击积极性。在我生命中的某个时刻,我发现有必要强迫性地、本能地诚实,但这往往对我或其他人没有多大帮助。

Most people value honesty and aspire to be honest. But honesty brings difficulties with it. You might be unsure how someone else is going to react to hearing what you think, and total honesty can be brutal. It can wound, anger, or demotivate. At one time in my life, I found the need to be compulsively, reflexively honest, but it often didn’t help me or anyone else very much.

我仍然想直截了当——用一种直截了当的方式说出我所看到的真相——随着时间的推移,我找到了更好的诚实方式,通过深思熟虑地选择我的措辞,通过关注对每个相关人员的同情,通过选择合适的时机说出我想说的话。例如,有时与某人私下谈论一个敏感话题很重要。Creativity , Inc.用“坦诚”这个词来谈论这一点。4

I still wanted to be direct—to speak my truth, as I see it, in a straightforward way—and over time, I found better ways to be honest, by choosing my words thoughtfully, by focusing on compassion for everyone involved, and by choosing the right moment to say what I have to say. Sometimes it’s important to speak privately with someone about a sensitive topic, for example. Creativity, Inc. talks about this in terms of “candor.”4

通过从完全、残酷的诚实转变为更友善、更体贴的直率,我对他人更有用,也帮助了自己。我现在更善于以一种可以被接受的方式直接交流。如果你在交流时注重巧妙的直率,你就不会犯太大的错误——无论是在留言还是在生活中。

By shifting my approach from total, brutal honesty toward a kinder, considerate kind of directness, I became much more useful to others, and I helped myself, too. I am now much better at being direct in my communication in a way that can be received well. If you focus on tactful directness as you communicate, you won’t go too far wrong—in giving a note or in life.

建设性的、及时的批评

Constructive and Timely Criticism

一份有用的笔记必须既有建设性又及时。Creativity , Inc.对此有非常清晰的阐述,作者说道:

For a note to be useful, it must be both constructive and timely. Creativity, Inc. lays out some thoughts about this very clearly when the authors say:

好的便条会指出哪里错了、哪里缺失了、哪里不清楚、哪里没有意义。好的便条会及时给出,不会太迟解决问题。好的便条不会提出要求;它甚至不必包含建议的修复方案。但如果有,那么提供该修复方案只是为了说明潜在的解决方案,而不是规定答案。但最重要的是,好的便条是具体的。“我无聊透顶”,这不是好的便条。5

A good note says what is wrong, what is missing, what isn’t clear, what makes no sense. A good note is offered at a timely moment, not too late to fix the problem. A good note doesn’t make demands; it doesn’t even have to include a proposed fix. But if it does, that fix is offered only to illustrate a potential solution, not to prescribe an answer. Most of all, though, a good note is specific. “I’m writhing with boredom,” is not a good note.5

这段短短的文字蕴含着许多智慧。让我们来解读一下。

There’s a lot of wisdom crammed into this short paragraph. Let’s unpack it.

“好的笔记会指出哪里错了、哪里缺失了、哪里不清楚、哪里没有意义。”里程碑评审小组正在寻找他们所评审的游戏中的问题:他们能看到但开发者看不到的东西。可能是某些东西出了问题或缺失了:游戏难度太快或难度不够,或者游戏没有给玩家机会学习如何玩它。在游戏设计中,问题通常与缺乏清晰度有关:我无法理解这些游戏系统是如何工作的,资源有什么作用,或者这个角色是谁。可能是游戏没有创造设计师想要的情感体验。当设计师想让它看起来非常严肃时,它可能会无意中显得很有趣。

“A good note says what is wrong, what is missing, what isn’t clear, what makes no sense.” The milestone review group is looking for problems in the game they’re reviewing: things that they can see but the developers can’t. It might be that something is wrong or is missing: the game gets too difficult too quickly or doesn’t get difficult enough, or maybe the game doesn’t give the player an opportunity to learn how to play it. In game design, problems are very often related to a lack of clarity: I can’t understand how those game systems work, what that resource does, or who this character is. It might be that the game doesn’t create the emotional experience that the designer intends. It might come off as unintentionally funny when the designer wants it to seem deadly serious.

如您所见,大多数可能出现的问题都取决于设计师的意图。评审小组成员通常会在给出说明之前询问设计师的意图。有时设计师的意图是相关的,有时则不然。我可以想象,无论设计师的意图如何,他们都应该明智地听取说明。

As you can see, most of these possible problems are dependent on what the designer intends. Review group members will often ask about the designer’s intent before they give a note. Sometimes the designer’s intent will be relevant, and sometimes not. I can imagine situations where a designer would be wise to hear a note, irrespective of their intent.

“及时提供良好的通知,解决问题还不算太晚。”项目越接近尾声,记录这一方面就越重要。在早期里程碑评审期间,所有问题都悬而未决,因此不太需要考虑这一点。讨论评审小组在垂直部分看到的几乎每个问题都至关重要,因为我们希望项目的设计基础牢固。但是我们不能在 alpha 里程碑之后添加任何功能(参见第 28 章),也不能在 beta 里程碑之后添加任何内容(参见第 31 章),因此评审小组的记录应牢记这些生产现实。

“A good note is offered at a timely moment, not too late to fix the problem.” The closer we get to the end of the project, the more important this aspect of note-giving becomes. It’s less of a consideration during the earlier milestone reviews, when all issues are up for grabs. It’s crucial to talk about almost every issue that the review group sees in a vertical slice, because we want the design foundations of a project to be strong. But we can’t add any more features beyond the alpha milestone (see chapter 28) and we can’t add any more content after the beta milestone (see chapter 31), so the notes from the review group should keep these production realities in mind.

“一份好的备忘录不会提出要求;它甚至不必包含拟议的解决方案。但如果有,那么提供的解决方案只是为了说明潜在的解决方案,而不是规定答案。”有些人认为,要使批评具有建设性,就必须提供解决问题的方案。但有时,仅仅指出问题就足够了。在皮克斯,智囊团评审小组没有权力,也不会试图告诉任何人该做什么,而《创意公司》杂志说,这正是它运作良好的原因。对于所有类型的艺术家来说,最有用的是了解什么对人们不起作用与他们的工作相遇。这开辟了一个解决问题的沟通空间,我们可以在其中迭代,直到最终找到正确的解决方案。

“A good note doesn’t make demands; it doesn’t even have to include a proposed fix. But if it does, that fix is offered only to illustrate a potential solution, not to prescribe an answer.” Some people think that for criticism to be constructive, it must offer a solution to a problem. But sometimes it might be enough just to identify a problem. At Pixar, the Braintrust review group doesn’t have authority and isn’t trying to tell anyone what to do, and Creativity, Inc. says that that’s what makes it work so well. What is most useful for artists of all types is to understand what isn’t working for the people who encounter their work. This opens up a space of communication about solving the problem, where we can iterate until we eventually find the right solution.

“但最重要的是,好的便条要具体。‘我无聊透顶’并不是好的便条。”我在顽皮狗工作时就认识到了这一原则,我们总是试图将反馈集中在我们在屏幕上看到的内容、通过扬声器听到的内容以及通过手中的控制器感受到的内容上。记录要具体而明确,避免抽象或泛泛而谈,只批评游戏设计,而不是设计师,这是推动游戏设计对话向前发展的最具建设性的方式。

“Most of all, though, a good note is specific. “I’m writhing with boredom,” is not a good note.” I recognize this principle from my time at Naughty Dog, where we would always try to keep our feedback focused on what we saw on the screen, heard through the speakers, and felt through the controller in our hands. Making a note concrete and specific, avoiding abstracts or generalizations, and only ever critiquing the game design, never the designer, is the most constructive way to move a game design conversation forward.

《Creativity, Inc.》引用了导演安德鲁·斯坦顿的话来总结良好的笔记和建设性的批评:

Creativity, Inc. sums up good note-giving and constructive criticism by quoting the director Andrew Stanton:

批评和建设性批评是有区别的。建设性批评是在批评的同时进行建设。你在拆解的同时进行建设,用你刚刚拆开的东西制作新的作品。这本身就是一种艺术形式。我总是觉得你给出的任何意见都应该能激励接受者——比如,“我怎样才能让那个孩子想重做作业?”所以你必须像个老师一样。有时你会用五十种不同的方式谈论问题,直到你发现一句话能让他们的眼睛瞪大,就好像他们在想,“哦,我想做这件事。” 6

There’s a difference between criticism and constructive criticism. With the latter, you’re constructing at the same time that you’re criticizing. You’re building as you’re breaking down, making new pieces to work with out of the stuff you’ve just ripped apart. That’s an art form in itself. I always feel like whatever notes you’re giving should inspire the recipient—like, “How do I get that kid to want to redo his homework?” So you’ve got to act like a teacher. Sometimes you talk about the problems in fifty different ways until you find that one sentence that you can see makes their eyes pop, as if they’re thinking, “Oh, I want to do it.”6

里程碑评审期间,演示游戏的开发者应该做什么?

What Should the Presenting Game Developers Do during a Milestone Review?

正如我们在第 12 章中讨论的那样,我们的记忆通常是有缺陷的,而且会受到情绪的强烈影响。因此,展示游戏的开发者应该做每个游戏设计师在收到反馈时都应该做的事情:写下来。(或者在审查小组允许的情况下进行录音。)通过记录我们在里程碑审查期间收到的每条笔记,当团队中的游戏设计师讨论如何对审查小组的建设性批评作出反应时,它们可以随时供日后分析。

As we discussed in chapter 12, our memories are generally faulty and strongly colored by emotion. So the developers who are presenting their game should do what every game designer should do in every context when they are receiving feedback: write it down. (Or make a recording, with the review group’s permission.) By recording every note we receive during a milestone review, they are readily at hand for later analysis, when the game designers on the team are discussing how to react to the constructive criticism of the review group.

任何游戏设计师在展示自己的游戏时,都应尽量避免采取防御性措施。接收反馈可能是一个情绪化的过程,但变得激动并开始为自己的作品辩护无济于事。设计师在作品受到批评时应始终保持情绪冷静,不要争论某个观点,而应要求澄清。

When any game designer is presenting their game, they should try not to get defensive. Receiving feedback can be an emotional process but becoming heated and starting to argue in defense of one’s work never helps. Designers should always stay emotionally cool while a critique of their work is unfolding, and instead of arguing a point, should ask for clarification.

讨论的时间会稍后到来,届时团队将试图弄清楚如何回应评审小组的反馈。如果在会议期间进行过多的争论,那么他们本可以得到大量高质量的笔记,但却浪费了宝贵的时间。有时,游戏设计师解释游戏中的某些内容是恰当且有用的,以帮助评审小组成员完善他们的反馈。我鼓励人们解释得恰到好处,让笔记切中要点。

The time for discussion will come later, when the team is trying to figure out how to respond to the feedback from the review group. For the presenting designers to argue too much during the meeting would waste valuable time when they could be getting a lot of high-quality notes. There are moments when it’s appropriate and useful for a game’s designer to explain something in the game, to help a review group member refine their feedback. I encourage people to explain just enough to bring the note on point.

向项目利益相关者展示

Presenting to Project Stakeholders

到目前为止,我们一直在讨论皮克斯智囊团式的里程碑评审,这种评审方式对于能够邀请值得信赖的同行来帮助对游戏提出看法的团队以及学生对同学的游戏提出建设性批评的游戏设计课程非常有效。然而,正如我们在本章中多次提到的那样,游戏行业中一种非常常见的里程碑评审类型是项目的利益相关者(即项目资助者)对正在进行中的游戏进行评审。过去,游戏项目的利益相关者通常是游戏发行商。如今,随着游戏行业的发展和多样化,各种金融机构和创意机构可能会为游戏项目提供资金。

So far, we’ve been discussing a Pixar Braintrust–style milestone review, which works very well for teams who can bring in trusted peers to help give perspective on a game, and in game design classes where students are contributing constructive critique of their classmates’ games. However, as we’ve mentioned a few times in this chapter, a very common type of milestone review in the game industry happens when a project’s stakeholders—the people funding the project—review a game as a work in progress. In the past, game project stakeholders have usually been game publishers. Today, money might come to game projects from a variety of financial and creative institutions, as the game industry grows and diversifies.

在里程碑评审会议上,利益相关者可能想要检查游戏的完成进度,或者他们可能对自上次里程碑评审以来游戏设计的发展方向感到担忧。利益相关者的战略计划或领导层可能会发生变化,并且可能会对游戏或其市场性产生新的疑问。游戏的未来资金——以及工作室员工的生计——很可能取决于里程碑评审的结果,糟糕的评审可能会导致里程碑付款延迟、预算削减或项目取消。由于经营实体游戏工作室的管理费用成本,一次里程碑付款延迟可能会导致工作室破产或关闭,而现金储备却很少。

At a milestone review meeting, the stakeholders might want to check in on a game’s progress toward completion, or they may have concerns about the direction that a game’s design has taken since the last milestone review. There could have been a change in strategic plan or leadership on the part of the stakeholders, and there may be new questions about the game or its marketability. Future funding for the game—and therefore the livelihoods of the people working at the studio—may very well be dependent on the outcome of the milestone review, with a bad review possibly leading to a delayed milestone payment, slashed budgets, or a canceled project. Because of the costs of the overheads associated with running a game studio with a bricks-and-mortar location, a single delayed milestone payment might lead to the bankruptcy or closure of a studio without much in the way of cash reserves.

与项目利益相关者举行的里程碑评审会议与智囊团式评审不同。因此,开发团队的领导层可能会被要求解释或证明团队迄今为止做出的设计决策。为里程碑评审会议设定明确的议程可能有助于确保会议按计划进行,并确保会议期间不会出现任何难以预料的意外。双方领导层成员之间的评审前讨论可能会有所帮助。提供有关游戏在游戏测试期间收到的积极反馈的经验数据也可以帮助开发人员以最佳方式展示他们的游戏。

A milestone review meeting to project stakeholders has a different dynamic than a Braintrust-style review. Accordingly, the development team’s leadership may be called on to explain or justify the design decisions that the team have made so far. Setting a clear agenda for a milestone review meeting could be useful to help keep the meeting on track and to make sure there aren’t any difficult surprises in store during the meeting. A pre-review discussion between members of leadership on both sides could help with this. Bringing empirical data about positive feedback that a game has received during playtests can also help developers to show their game in its best possible light.

本书不全面讨论与项目利益相关者进行里程碑评审会议期间可能发生的所有事情。在向项目利益相关者进行里程碑评审报告时,任何冲突中的关键参与者都需要具备强大的谈判技巧、出色的商业头脑和丰富的合同法知识,以便能够以一种为所有人创造最佳结果的方式驾驭局面。

A full discussion of everything that might happen during a milestone review meeting with project stakeholders is outside the scope of this book. The key players in any conflict that takes place around a milestone review presentation to project stakeholders will need strong skills of negotiation, excellent business acumen, and extensive knowledge of contract law, in order to be able to navigate the terrain in a way that creates the best outcomes for everyone.

开发团队和利益相关者之间建立信任和尊重关系的程度越高,里程碑评审流程就越好。健康的关系很珍贵,需要时间来建立,这就是为什么开发商和发行商经常会从一个项目到另一个项目进行合作。如果你是游戏开发商,可以向利益相关者应具有公平交易的声誉,并且以支持(而不是反对)与其达成交易的游戏开发商而闻名。应谨慎避免与任何有以捏造的理由扣留或拒绝里程碑付款记录的发行商合作。此类做法是对商业诚信的简单“嗅觉测试”。此外,游戏开发商应避免在里程碑交付方面做出过度承诺,​​以免给业务合作伙伴留下错误的印象,让他们对里程碑评审中应该看到的内容产生误解。

The more that can be done to cultivate a relationship between the development team and the stakeholders based on trust and respect, the better the milestone review process will be. Healthy relationships are precious and take time to develop, which is why developers and publishers will often work with each other from project to project. If you are a game developer, seek out financial backing for your projects from stakeholders who have a reputation for fair dealing and who are known to support—rather than work in opposition to—the game developers they strike deals with. Scrupulously avoid any publisher that has a track record of withholding or denying milestone payments on trumped-up grounds. Such practices are a simple “smell test” for business integrity. In addition, game developers should avoid overpromising in terms of their milestone deliverables, to avoid creating an inaccurate impression in their business partners of what they should expect to see at a milestone review.

当您发现自己在向项目利益相关者进行里程碑评审报告时面临挑战时,请毫不犹豫地向游戏行业领导团队的经验丰富的成员寻求专家建议。当出现困难情况时,导师和董事会成员通常很乐意提供帮助。

Don’t hesitate to seek out expert advice from experienced members of game industry leadership teams when you find yourself faced with the challenges around milestone review presentations to your project’s stakeholders. Mentors and board members are often happy to help when difficult situations arise.

里程碑审查过程的情感方面

Emotional Aspects of the Milestone Review Process

当我们向他人展示我们的工作时,我们会觉得风险很大——如果我们的游戏未来的资金取决于里程碑式的评审,那么风险可能真的很大。展示未完成或存在问题的作品可能会让我们情绪激动,因为我们与所创造的创意作品之间存在关系,也可能涉及财务风险。

When we present our work to others, it can feel like there’s a lot at stake—and if our game’s future funding is dependent on a milestone review, there may actually be a lot at stake. Showing work that isn’t finished or that has problems can be emotionally exposing because of the relationship we have with the creative things we make and because of the financial risk that might also be involved.

因此,我们应该花点时间考虑里程碑评审过程中的情感方面。首先,我要承认,里程碑评审过程中的情感是真实的。我绝不会告诉你,你应该忍耐、压抑或坚持下去。根据我的经验,这只会将情感转移到一个隐蔽的地方,在那里它们可以凝结、发酵,积聚力量。压抑的情感不可避免地会在之后悄悄袭来,并在不合适的时刻给你带来令人不快的惊喜。

As a result, we should take a moment to consider the emotional aspects of the milestone review process. First, I want to acknowledge that the emotions you feel as a part of a milestone review are real. I would never tell you that you should just suck them up, stuff them down, or tough it out. In my experience, that just shunts the emotions away into a hidden place where they can curdle and ferment, gaining strength. Stuffed emotions will inevitably creep up on you later and give you a nasty surprise at an inappropriate moment.

在整个开发过程中,控制情绪是有益的——不是压抑情绪,而是管理情绪,这样它们就不会对我们正在进行的游戏设计工作产生负面影响。以不受控制的方式表达的强烈情绪,如愤怒或恐惧,可能会对合作者群体造成伤害,但你不应该觉得你必须完全向队友隐瞒自己的感受。他们会知道你是否心烦意乱;只要尽力缓和你的情绪就行了。如果发泄情绪(通过大声说出愤怒或恐惧)有助于你释放难以控制的情绪,那么就找一个合适的时间和地点发泄情绪,与队友保持一定距离。你的非工作朋友或家人可能会给你这种支持,这样你就可以带着更好的感觉回到工作岗位,并准备好专注于你的游戏。

Throughout the development process, it is helpful to keep our emotions under control—not to suppress them, but to manage them so they don’t negatively impact the game design work that we’re doing. Strong emotions like anger or fear that are expressed in an uncontrolled way can be damaging to groups of collaborators, though you shouldn’t feel like you have to completely hide your feelings from your teammates. They’ll know if you’re upset; just do what you can to moderate your feelings. If it helps you to let go of difficult emotion by venting—letting out anger or fear by giving voice to them—then find an appropriate time and place to vent, where you have some distance from your teammates. Your nonwork friends or family members might be able to offer you this kind of support, so you can come back to your work feeling better and ready to focus on your game.

在我所在的团队中,我总是牢记我们都在为游戏的伟大而共同努力。以建立团队成员之间牢固的合作关系的方式工作是实现游戏设计卓越的可靠途径,没有什么比在尊重和信任你的同事中以最佳能力工作更令人满意的了。这种良好的感觉如果我们保持同样的开放态度,对所提出的意见和想法心存感激,那么这一理念就可以扩展到里程碑评审小组的成员。

On the teams I’ve been on, I’ve always made it a point to remember that we were all working together toward the greatness of our game. Working in a way that builds strong collaborative relationships between team members is a reliable path to excellence in game design, and there is nothing as satisfying as the feeling that you’re working at your optimal capacity among peers who respect and trust you. This good feeling can extend to the members of a milestone review group, if we keep this same attitude of openness to input and gratitude for the ideas that are being given to us.

里程碑评审建立在信任、尊重和同理心的基础上,效果最好。接受评审的游戏开发者和提供意见的团队之间建立的信任越多,效果就越好。有些评审过程可能很残酷,甚至很残酷。我相信你听说过创意艺术评论会议,它让人泪流满面。根据我的经验,这种过程很少具有建设性。作为评审员,我们应该努力做到友善、尊重和支持。制作艺术已经够难了,我们应该以一种可以被听到的方式提出我们的批评。在我的职业生涯中,我必须学会表达我的想法,以便设计能够得到改进,但我也需要谨慎选择我的措辞——有时,还要选择我的时机——这样我的反馈才能传达给需要听到的人,而不会被他们的防御之墙所阻挡。

Milestone reviews work best when they are founded on trust, respect, and empathy. The more trust that can develop between the game developers whose work is under review, and the group that is giving notes, the better. Some review processes can be brutal or even cruel. I’m sure you’ve heard of critique sessions in the creative arts that reduced people to tears. In my experience, that kind of process is rarely constructive. As reviewers we should work to be kind, respectful, and supportive. Making art is tough enough, and we should present our critique in a way that can be heard. In my professional life, I had to learn to get my ideas across so that the design could be improved, but I also needed to choose my words—and sometimes, my timing—carefully, so my feedback would make it across to the person who needed to hear it and not get blocked by a wall of their defensiveness.

作为游戏设计师和开发者,我们需要深入审视自己的工作,以便改进它,这可能意味着我们要倾听那些我们难以接受的意见。谦逊与自负之间的矛盾对于每个有创造力的人来说都很重要。我们需要一种自负——一种观点——来创作出富有创意、有趣的作品,但如果我们的工作想要出类拔萃,我们也需要谦逊,对新的想法、机会和解决方案持开放态度。

As game designers and developers, we need to look deeply at our work in order to improve it, and that might mean being exposed to opinions that are difficult for us to hear. The tension between humility and ego is an important one for every creative person. We need an ego—a point of view—to make creatively interesting work, but we also need to be humble and remain open to new ideas, opportunities, and solutions if our work is to excel.

尽管我们努力让里程碑评审过程具有同事关系,不受权力动态的影响,但评审过程往往或明或暗地带有等级制度。工作室负责人或教授忽视他们作为其角色的一部分所拥有的权威,或忽视那些非常资深、有魅力或受欢迎的评审小组成员所拥有的权力,这是天真。还需要考虑社会公平问题,因为边缘化社区的人可能会以与特权阶层完全不同的方式接受批评。每个创意社区和评审小组都必须找到自己的方式来解决这一问题。回归尊重、信任和同意的基本原则可能会有所帮助。

Despite whatever attempts we make to have our milestone review process be collegial and free of power dynamics, the process of critique is often explicitly or implicitly hierarchical. It’s naive for a studio head or a professor to ignore the authority they hold as an aspect of their role or the power held by review group members who are very senior, charismatic, or popular. There are also questions of social equity to consider, as people from marginalized communities might receive critique in a fundamentally different way from those with privilege. Every creative community and review group will have to find their own way through this. Returning to the grounding principles of respect, trust, and consent might help.

如今,无论是独立游戏设计师还是 3A 游戏设计师,都会定期联系朋友和同行,向他们发送游戏版本或将他们带入工作室征求反馈。对于游戏设计师来说,从游戏设计专家那里获得大量关于游戏的明智反馈是非常有益的,因为这些专家与游戏没有任何利益关系(无论是经济利益、情感利益还是社会利益)。

Game designers today, from indie to triple-A, will regularly reach out to their friends and peers, sending them builds of their games or bringing them into the studio to get their feedback. It’s very healthy for game designers to get a large amount of informed feedback on a game by game design experts who don’t have any kind of stake—financial, emotional, or social—in their games.

当评审小组了解开发人员时,评审小组中的个人也会相互了解,如果建立了相互尊重和信任的纽带,评审小组将成为游戏开发团队最强大的资源之一。不要错过在项目整个生命周期内获得这种宝贵意见的机会,尤其是在您达到项目的每个重要里程碑时。

When a review group gets to know a developer, as the individuals in the review group get to know each other, and if bonds of mutual respect and trust are set up, that review group becomes one of the most powerful resources that the game development team has at their disposal. Don’t miss the opportunity to receive this valuable input throughout the lifetime of your project, and particularly as you reach each of your project’s major milestones.

  1. 1. Catmull 和 Wallace,《Creativity, Inc.》,86 页。

  2. 1.  Catmull and Wallace, Creativity, Inc., 86.

  3. 2. Catmull 和 Wallace,《Creativity, Inc.》,70。

  4. 2.  Catmull and Wallace, Creativity, Inc., 70.

  5. 3. Catmull 和 Wallace,《Creativity, Inc.》,93 页。

  6. 3.  Catmull and Wallace, Creativity, Inc., 93.

  7. 4. Catmull 和 Wallace,《Creativity, Inc.》,86 页。

  8. 4.  Catmull and Wallace, Creativity, Inc., 86.

  9. 5. Catmull 和 Wallace,《Creativity, Inc.》,103。

  10. 5.  Catmull and Wallace, Creativity, Inc., 103.

  11. 6. Catmull 和 Wallace,《Creativity, Inc.》,103。

  12. 6.  Catmull and Wallace, Creativity, Inc., 103.

 

 

21 前期制作的挑战

21    The Challenge of Preproduction

项目的预制作阶段给我们带来了巨大的挑战。预制作结束时需要交付三大成果:垂直切片、游戏设计宏和时间表。它们必须在相对较短的时间内完成——通常约为整个项目长度的三分之一——在此期间,我们必须对我们的游戏做出大量重要决定。

The preproduction phase of a project offers us a significant challenge. Three big deliverables come due at the end of preproduction: the vertical slice, the game design macro, and a schedule. They must be created in a relatively short amount of time—usually about a third of the total project length—and during that time we have to make a large number of important decisions about our game.

然而,综合起来看,构思阶段和预生产阶段为这一决策过程创造了良好的入口。正如我们在第 15 章中讨论的那样,最好在项目中期付出最大的努力。我们在预生产阶段结束时所付出的努力自然会随着我们进行构思和预生产而逐渐增加。

However, taken together, the ideation phase and the preproduction phase create a good on-ramp to this decision-making process. As we discussed in chapter 15, it’s best to work hardest in the middle of a project. The increased amount of effort that it takes us to get to the end of preproduction very naturally maps onto a gradual ramping up of our momentum as we move through ideation and preproduction.

大多数创意项目都是在我们努力的过程中积累动力的。我们做的工作越多,我们对自己的想法就越执着,我们对正在使用的设计元素的理解也越深刻。我们所做的计划对我们来说变得越来越清晰,我们习惯了我们的工具和工作流程,我们弄清楚了如何与我们的队友进行有效的沟通。一些有创造力的人太沉迷于他们的动力,以至于他们忘记弄清楚他们的项目是否在范围内。这就是为什么我们要制定一个宏和一个时间表,在我们到达项目的一半之前做好这些是合适的——在我们还有一大段时间的时候计划好我们的时间。

Most creative projects gather momentum as we work on them. The more work we do, the more committed we become to our ideas, and the more we understand the design elements that we’re working with. The plan for what we’re making becomes clearer and clearer to us, we get used to our tools and workflow, and we figure out how to communicate effectively with our teammates. Some creative people get so caught up in their momentum that they forget to figure out whether their project is in scope. That’s why we make a macro and a schedule, and it’s appropriate to do this well before we hit the halfway mark of our project—to plan our time while we still have a good chunk of it left.

正如我们将在本书的下一节中讨论项目的完整制作阶段时所看到的,即使我们在预制作结束时编写了宏和计划,我们可能也需要一段时间才能制定出最终的计划。所以不要被创建游戏设计宏的挑战所困扰,也不要误以为它是官僚主义、不灵活和棘手的。在完整制作中仍然有回旋的余地。

As we’ll see in this book’s next section, where we’ll discuss the full production phase of the project, even though we write the macro and schedule at the end of preproduction, it’ll probably take us a little while to settle down into a firm, final plan. So don’t be paralyzed by the challenge of creating a game design macro, or mistake it for something bureaucratic, inflexible, and intractable. There will still be room for maneuver in full production.

致力于设计

Committing to a Design

我喜欢“是的,而且”式的沟通和设计协作,在这种模式下,我们会以彼此的想法为基础,建设性地推进设计。在每一次创意互动和项目的每个阶段,我都会尽量说“是的,而且”。

I’m a fan of “yes, and” styles of communication and design collaboration, where we build constructively on each other’s ideas to move a design forward. I try to say “yes, and” whenever I can throughout every creative interaction and in every phase of a project.

然而,每个领域的设计师——不仅仅是游戏设计——在设计过程中都需要多次说“不”。设计师必须能够识别出一个想法是否存在致命缺陷。这是设计过程中不可避免的一部分,当我们考虑一个特定的设计理念时,我们必须从许多不同的角度仔细考虑这个想法,并找出任何明显的行不通的原因。也许两个设计元素之间的相互作用会破坏我们试图创造的体验。有可能设计会创造出一种身体上不安全的情况,比如导致某人在虚拟现实中撞到墙上,或者在看手机时误入车流中。也许某种设计方法在时间或金钱方面过于昂贵。

However, designers in every field—not just game design—do have to say no a lot as part of their process. A designer has to be able to recognize when an idea has a fatal flaw in it. It’s an inevitable part of the design process that, when we’re entertaining a particular design idea, we have to think the idea through from many different perspectives and identify any obvious reasons why it won’t work. Perhaps the interaction between two design elements will undermine the experience we’re trying to create. It could be the case that the design will create a situation that is physically unsafe, like causing someone to run into a wall in virtual reality or wander into traffic while looking at their phone. Maybe a particular design approach will be too expensive in terms of time or money.

我们必须找到可以坚持的设计理念,并且我们无法想象其中存在任何重大问题。当我们开始实施这些理念时,我们很可能仍会发现问题,但如果我们从看似不错的想法开始,那么至少我们走上了一条正确的道路。因此,在预制作开始时,您可能会在有关游戏设计的对话中说很多“不”。当然,您要确保分歧的原因是基于理性和合理性,而不是品味差异、试图获得权力或对立。

We have to find design ideas to commit to that we can’t imagine any major problems with. It’s likely that we’ll still find problems when we begin to work with those ideas, but if we start with ideas that seem okay, then at least we’re setting out down a good track. So, at the start of preproduction, you might be saying no a lot in conversations about your game’s design. Of course, you want to make sure that the reasons for your disagreements are grounded in reason and rationality, rather than differences in taste, attempts to gain power, or contrariness.

在前期制作进行到一半时,你要确保在游戏设计方面达成的共识要多于分歧。你必须转换到一种模式,坚持想法而不是拒绝它们。一个好方法是将看似不同的概念综合成新的想法,让它们很好地结合在一起。作为设计师,我们都有一种自然的倾向,希望推迟最终决定,直到我们拥有更多信息并有更多时间思考。然而,这并不是我们成为更好设计师的方式。

By halfway through preproduction, you want to make sure you’re reaching more agreements than disagreements about your game’s design. You have to shift into a mode where you are committing to ideas rather than rejecting them. A good way to do this is to synthesize seemingly differing concepts into new ideas that hang together well. As designers, we all have a natural tendency to want to defer a final decision until later when we have more information and have had more time to think. That’s not how we become better designers, though.

通过做出一些值得信赖的可靠决定,然后付诸实践,并在此基础上提出更多想法,我们才能成为更好的设计师。即使我们犯了错误,至少我们在设计,而不是原地踏步。

We become better designers by making a few solid decisions that we trust and then running with them, committing to even more ideas that build on that foundation. Even if we make mistakes, at least we are designing, not spinning our wheels.

如果预生产进展不顺利,就取消项目

Canceling a Project if Preproduction Doesn’t Go Well

在 Mark Cerny 的 DICE 峰会演讲中,他花了一些时间讨论预生产阶段一个困难但重要的方面:如果预生产进展不顺利,则取消项目。在 Method 中,预生产最终以绿灯流程结束,在此流程中,将预生产的结果(垂直切片和宏观)呈现给项目的利益相关者:为项目完成提供资金的人。利益相关者需要评估他们所看到的内容并决定这是否是他们认为会在市场上取得成功的游戏。

In Mark Cerny’s D.I.C.E. Summit talk, he spends some time discussing a difficult but important aspect of the preproduction phase: canceling a project if preproduction doesn’t go well. In Method, preproduction culminates in a greenlight process, where the results of preproduction—the vertical slice and the macro—are presented to the project’s stakeholders: the people who will put up the money for the completion of the project. It’s up to the stakeholders to evaluate what they see and to decide whether this is a game that they think will be successful in the marketplace.

如果利益相关者相信该项目会成功,那么它将获得额外资金并可以全面投入生产。如果利益相关者有理由怀疑该项目是否会成功,那么要么开发团队将获得更多时间和金钱来解决利益相关者看到的问题,要么该项目将被取消,团队将继续开展其他工作。

If the stakeholders believe the project will be successful, then it will be granted additional funds and can move forward into full production. If the stakeholders have reason to doubt that the project will be a success, then either the development team will be given some more time and money to address the issues that the stakeholders see, or the project will be canceled, and the team will go on to work on something else.

制作垂直切片并不便宜。2002 年,马克·塞尼 (Mark Cerny) 估计前期制作可能要花费一百万美元,而今天可能要花费更多马克承认,为一个可能不会获得批准的项目花费大量资金进行前期制作,听起来像是在浪费大量资金,但他坚持认为这是整个过程中重要且最终可以省钱的部分

It’s not cheap to create a vertical slice. In 2002, Mark Cerny estimated that preproduction could cost a million dollars, and today it could cost a lot more than that. Mark acknowledges that spending a large sum of money on preproduction for a project that might not get greenlit might sound like a license just to blow a lot of cash, but maintains that this is an important and ultimately money-saving part of the process.

通过在预生产期间降低成本,你实际上在游戏的实际生产过程中节省了成本这是因为如果游戏没有成功,你只会浪费一百万美元。相信我,你可以浪费更多。1

By being cost inefficient during preproduction, you are in fact being cost efficient vis-à-vis the actual production of the game. That’s because if it’s not going to work out, you only blew a million dollars. You could blow a lot more, believe me.1

在撰写本文时,商业视频游戏的开发成本可能在 1500 万到 1.5 亿美元之间,并且可能还需要花费等量的营销费用。与将游戏推向市场却最终失败相比,花大作开发和营销预算的一小部分来构建垂直部分以证明我们能否制作出好游戏,这岂不是更好?我们可以探索冒险但令人兴奋的新游戏风格和故事主题,而不是依赖相同的熟悉、久经考验的方法。令人高兴的是,出版商似乎终于接受了这种思维方式,尽管我们还有很长的路要走。

At the time of writing, a commercial videogame might cost anywhere between fifteen and one hundred and fifty million dollars to develop, and might cost an additional equivalent amount in marketing spend. How much better would it be to spend a fraction of the development and marketing budget of a big game in building a vertical slice, to prove whether or not we can make something good, than to bring a game to market only to have it flop? We could explore risky but exciting new game styles and story subjects, instead of relying on the same familiar, tried-and-true approaches. Happily, publishers finally seem to be coming around to this way of thinking, though we still have a long way to go.

当然,这种不成功便成仁的流程可能会让开发人员感到失望甚至沮丧。全身心投入一个项目却最终被拒绝,这当然很难。Mark Cerny 对那些项目没有获得批准的团队说了一些安慰的话,他通过消除误解的方式告诉了他们:

Of course, this greenlight sink-or-swim process can lead to disappointment and even frustration on the part of the developers. It is certainly hard to put your heart and soul into a project only to have it seemingly rejected. Mark Cerny has some words of consolation for a team whose project does not receive a green light, which he offers them by way of dispelling a myth:

“项目取消是管理不善或团队不善的表现。”其实不然!项目取消有时是一件值得骄傲的事情。无论团队的才华如何,如果你无法制作出引人注目的首款可玩 [垂直切片],那么是时候终止项目并继续前进了。伙计们,你刚刚为自己节省了数百万美元和一年的团队生命。2

“A canceled project is a sign of bad management or a bad team.” Well, no, actually! A canceled project is sometimes something to be very proud of. Regardless of the talent of the team, if you can’t reach a compelling first playable [vertical slice], it’s time to kill the project and move on. Folks, you just saved yourself several million dollars and a year of the team’s lives.2

马克在这里表现出对开发团队时间的尊重令人钦佩,这也是游戏创作文化中经常被忽视的一个方面。无论我们是游戏开发者还是游戏玩家、游戏营销人员还是游戏商人,尊重彼此的时间最终都会让所有人受益,从而增加信任并制作出更好的游戏。

The respect that Mark shows here for the development team’s time is admirable and an often-neglected aspect of the cultures around game creation. Showing respect for each other’s time, whether we are game developers or game players, game marketers or game businesspeople, is something that ultimately benefits everyone in terms of increased trust and better games.

全面投入生产

Onward into Full Production

现在我们已经 (a) 使用垂直切片为我们的游戏创建了我们知道具有坚实核心的设计,并且 (b) 开始使用游戏设计宏和时间表来控制我们项目的范围,我们已准备好进入全面生产阶段。

Now that we’ve (a) used a vertical slice to create a design for our game that we know has a solid core, and (b) begun to bring the scope of our project under control using a game design macro and a schedule, we’re ready to move into full production.

在本书的下一部分中,我将介绍我们如何从预生产阶段过渡到全面生产阶段。我将介绍站立会议,这是一种让我们的团队在合作时保持同步的简单技术。我将讨论如何进一步规范我们的游戏测试流程,以便我们越来越有信心我们制作的游戏是好的,我还会告诉你游戏指标,我们构建的工具可以让我们深入了解玩家的体验和游戏的设计。然后,我将讨论有助于我们完成项目的两个重要里程碑:alpha 和 beta。

In the next section of this book, I’ll look at how we shift gears as we move from preproduction to full production. I’ll describe stand-up meetings, a simple technique to keep our team in sync as we work together. I’ll discuss ways to further formalize our playtesting process so we can become more and more confident that the game we’re making is turning out okay, and I’ll tell you about game metrics, where we build tools that give us deep insights into our players’ experiences and our game’s design. Then I’ll discuss the two important milestones that will help us bring our project home: alpha and beta.

预生产交付成果摘要

A Summary of the Preproduction Deliverables

图 21.1简要概括了游戏项目预制作阶段应交付的内容。

Figure 21.1 shows a short summary of the deliverables due during the preproduction phase of a game project.

图 21.1

Figure 21.1

  1. 1. Mark Cerny,“DICE Summit 2002”,https://www.youtube.com/watch ? v=QOAW9ioWAvE,6:26。

  2. 1.  Mark Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOAW9ioWAvE, 6:26.

  3. 2. Cerny,“2002 年 DICE 峰会”,26:48。

  4. 2.  Cerny, “D.I.C.E. Summit 2002,” 26:48.

 

 

第三阶段:全面生产——建设与发现

Phase Three: Full Production—Building and Discovering

 

 

22 全面生产的特征

22    The Character of Full Production

游戏项目的完整制作阶段是我们开发游戏的阶段。它有两个主要里程碑:alpha 里程碑和 beta 里程碑。每个里程碑之前都有一个同名的阶段:alpha 阶段通向 alpha 里程碑,beta 阶段通向 beta 里程碑。

The full production phase of a game project is the time when we build out the game. It has two major milestones: the alpha milestone and the beta milestone. Each of these is preceded by a phase with the same name: the alpha phase leads up to the alpha milestone, and the beta phase leads up to the beta milestone.

alpha 里程碑通常出现在整个制作过程的三分之二处,而且,以一种有趣的分形方式,它通常也出现在整个项目的三分之二处。beta 里程碑标志着我们有趣的制作过程中全面制作的结束(见图22.1)。我们将在本章后面详细讨论 alpha 和 beta,每个里程碑在本书后面都有自己的章节。

The alpha milestone typically arrives about two-thirds of the way through full production, and, in an interestingly fractal way, it also usually comes about two-thirds of the way through the whole project. The beta milestone marks the end of full production in our playful production process (see figure 22.1). We’ll talk more about alpha and beta later in this chapter, and each milestone has its own chapter later in this book.

图 22.1

Figure 22.1

整个生产阶段及其里程碑。图片来源:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。

The full production phase and its milestones. Image credit: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, Mattie Rosen, and Richard Lemarchand.

呈现垂直切片和游戏设计宏

Presenting the Vertical Slice and Game Design Macro

全面制作阶段的开始通常是展示团队制定的垂直切片、游戏设计宏和时间表。根据具体情况,团队领导可能已经向项目的利益相关者(执行制片人、发行商或其他财务支持者)展示了这些交付成果,以便获得反馈并获准进入全面制作阶段。根据团队的总体规模,最好再次向团队展示交付成果,以确保在全面制作开始时每个人都达成共识。

It’s typical to begin the full production phase by presenting the vertical slice, game design macro, and schedule that the team has created. Depending on the context, the team’s leadership may have already presented these deliverables to the project’s stakeholders (executive producers, publishers, or other financial backers) in order to receive feedback and to be given the green light to enter full production. Depending on the total team size, it’s good to then re-present the deliverables to the team itself to make sure everyone is on the same page as full production begins.

分享我们的工作是启动全面制作的好方法。我们可以看到我们在项目的前两个阶段取得了哪些成就——而且通常成就很多。我们对团队中每个人都在构建的游戏达成了共识,并开始了解哪些方面已经运行良好,哪些方面需要更多关注。现在,我们已准备好开始实施游戏的剩余部分,并参与正在进行的游戏测试和设计评审,这是我们充满乐趣的制作过程的特点。

Sharing our work is a good way to kick off full production. We can see what we have accomplished in the first two phases of the project—and it’s usually a lot. We create a shared understanding of the game that everyone on the team is building, and we start to understand what’s already working well and what needs more attention. We are now ready to begin implementing the remaining parts of the game and to engage in the ongoing playtesting and design review that characterizes our playful production process.

完成你的任务列表

Working through Your Task List

预生产阶段是一段自由自在的时间,没有结构,相对不受跟踪,可以凭直觉进行设计。完整生产阶段则不同。还记得我们在第 9 章中讨论过的装配线吗?完整生产更像装配线。有了宏观和时间表,我们现在有了一份必须完成的任务列表,以便构建我们的游戏,我们可以开始按步骤进行工作。我们将逐步完成工作,创建所需的机制、角色和级别,从列表中检查任务,直到游戏完成。

The preproduction phase was a freewheeling time of unstructured, relatively untracked time and intuitive designing-by-making. The full production phase is different. Remember the assembly line that we talked about in chapter 9? Full production is a little more like that. Thanks to our macro and schedule, we now have a list of tasks that we have to complete in order to build out our game, and we can start to work down it. We’ll do the step-by-step work to create the mechanics, characters, and levels we need, checking off tasks from our list until our game is complete.

但我们不应该停止思考,盲目地执行计划。我们需要保持参与度,并时刻关注游戏设计。游戏是一个整体系统——我们添加或删除的每一个小东西都会影响整个游戏。我们的游戏设计宏观是对某种设计的承诺,我们需要遵循它,尽管可能不是完全按照字面意思。我们已经就游戏设计做出了足够多的决定,我们可以满怀信心地向前迈进,但这些决定只是宏观决定。在完成游戏的详细微观设计工作后,我们仍然有足够的空间来塑造游戏。

But we shouldn’t switch our brains off and follow our plan blindly. We need to stay engaged and alert about our game’s design. Games are holistic systems—every little thing we add or remove will affect the game as a whole. Our game design macro is a commitment to a certain design, and we need to follow it, though maybe not to the exact letter. We’ve made enough decisions about our game’s design that we can move forward with confidence, but those decisions are only macro decisions. We still have plenty of room to shape the game as we complete the detailed micro design work that goes into it.

我并不是允许你在全面制作过程中改变对游戏的想法。如果你在全面制作过程中频繁更改宏,你的游戏可能就无法完成。你会像草地上的小狗一样四处追逐蝴蝶。虽然成为那只小狗是一件令人愉快的事情,但在全面制作过程中,我们希望自己更像是一只精力充沛的狗,冲向即将接住的飞盘。

I’m not giving you permission here to change your mind about your game halfway through full production. If you change your macro a lot as you pass through full production, your game probably won’t come together. You’ll be like a puppy in a meadow chasing butterflies this way and that. As delightful as it would be to be that puppy, during full production we want to be more like an energetic dog dashing toward a frisbee that it’s about to catch.

有时,您在宏中放入的内容会在您进行完整制作的过程中以新的方式向您展示。您可能会在宏中发现一些明智的设计直觉,而您在编写宏时并没有完全意识到其影响。或者您可能会在完整制作过程中发现一些将改变游戏的整体玩家体验的东西,这些发现不会破坏您所做的设计工作,反而会增强它。我们将在下面的“完整制作过程中何时冒险”中讨论这种现象。

Sometimes things that you put in the macro will reveal themselves to you in new ways as you move through full production. You might discover some wise design intuition in your macro, the impact of which you hadn’t fully realized when you wrote it. Or you might make discoveries during full production that will transform the whole player experience of your game, and which don’t derail the design work you’ve done but instead enhance it. We’ll look at this phenomenon in “When to Take a Risk during Full Production,” below.

从预生产到全面生产的过渡转变

Changing Gears in the Transition from Preproduction to Full Production

突然改变工作方式可能会很困难,而且预生产和全面生产之间的这种态度转变可能需要一些时间来适应。注意当你开始根据任务列表工作时,你的工作习惯会如何适应。如果你是一个更直观的开发人员,喜欢在工作中做出决定,那么可能需要付出一些努力。考虑一下你流程的简单方面可能会有所帮助,比如你喜欢如何通过任务列表跟踪你的进度。你可能希望每天在固定的时间查看任务列表,无论何时完成任务,或者更频繁地查看。

It can be hard to suddenly change your way of working, and this shift in attitude between preproduction and full production may take some time to adjust to. Notice how your work habits adapt as you begin to work from a list of tasks. If you’re a more intuitive developer who likes to make decisions on the fly, it may take some effort. It might be helpful to think about simple aspects of your process, such as how you like to track your progress through a list of tasks. You might like to look at the task list at a regular time every day, whenever you finish a task, or even more frequently than that.

在全面制作开始时经常发生的一件事是,游戏设计宏图(电子表格中的宏部分)需要额外的关注。我曾经参与过的每个项目都是如此。我过去常常为此感到压力很大,认为这意味着我们在预制作中失败了。现在,我只是接受它作为从预制作到全面制作转变过程的一部分。我试着优雅地处理它,接受游戏设计宏需要更多的关注和关注才能达到高质量水平,并尽快给予关注。使用里程碑评审反馈并寻求有关您的宏是否需要更多工作的其他建议。

One common thing that often happens at the beginning of full production is that the game design macro chart (the part of the macro in the spreadsheet) needs some extra attention. This has been true for just about every project I’ve ever worked on. I used to get stressed out about it, thinking that it meant we had failed at preproduction in some way. Nowadays, I just accept it as a part of the process of changing gears from preproduction and full production. I try to deal with it gracefully, by accepting that the game design macro needs some more care and attention to bring it up to a high level of quality, and giving it that attention as quickly as possible. Use the milestone review feedback and seek out additional advice about whether your macro needs more work.

但是,当你应该继续构建游戏的其余部分时,请避免只是摆弄宏观图表的陷阱。你可能熟悉这句话:“完美是优秀的敌人。”成为一个成功的创意人士的关键之一是学会知道你什么时候已经完成了一项任务并应该继续做其他事情。

However, avoid the pitfall of just fiddling with your macro chart when you should be getting on with building out the rest of your game. You might be familiar with the saying, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” One of the keys to becoming a successful creative person is learning to know when you’ve done enough work on a task and should move on to something else.

检查你的项目目标

Checking In on Your Project Goals

每当你必须在解释游戏设计宏时做出决定,或者如果你在尝试解决设计问题时遇到困难,请回顾你的项目目标。你的经验目标和设计目标几乎总是会引导你找到解决方案。根据我的经验,那些目标与最初构想大相径庭的项目,只有偶尔才会取得好结果;在大多数设计过程中,与你最初计划做的事情保持一致都是一个健康的过程。然而,偏离项目目标和随着你对游戏的了解越来越多而完善目标以使其更加具体之间是有区别的。一个是适得其反的,而另一个是设计过程的核心。

Whenever you have to make a call in interpreting your game design macro, or if you ever get stuck when trying to solve a design problem, refer back to your project goals. Your experience goals and design goals will almost always guide you toward a solution. In my experience, projects whose goals drift radically from their original conception only occasionally turn out well; it’s a healthy part of most every design process to stay in touch with what you were originally planning to do. However, there’s a difference between drifting away from your project goals and refining your goals to make them more specific as you learn more about your game. One is counterproductive, while the other is at the core of the design process.

在第 11 章中,Tracy Fullerton 谈到了在通过游戏测试和迭代探索游戏设计时,磨练和制定项目目标的价值。Tracy 告诉我,在她看来,“锁定 [你的项目] 目标,从不根据游戏的现实重新考虑它们……是一个会阻碍 [开发] 的僵化过程。……随着游戏从你正在做的工作中浮现出来,它开始更清楚地阐明和说明你最初陈述的目标的本质。就像在你研究一个想法时重写一个句子或一个段落一样,磨练你的体验目标可以让你越来越专注于生产过程。”

In chapter 11, Tracy Fullerton talked about the value of honing and crafting our project goals as we make discoveries about the design of our game through playtesting and iteration. Tracy told me that, as she sees it, “locking [your project] goals and never reconsidering them in light of the reality of your game is a rigid process that will thwart [development]. As the game emerges from the work you are doing, it begins to illuminate and illustrate more clearly the essence of your originally stated goals. Like rewriting a sentence or a paragraph as you work through an idea, honing your experience goals can bring better and better focus to the production process.”

在第 11 章中,Tracy 告诉我们,保持项目目标的可实现性是项目实用性的一个重要部分。因此,全面生产的开始为我们提供了一个绝佳的机会来磨练和制定项目目标,使它们与所有事情保持一致我们发现。这样可以保持它们的最新状态,这样无论何时我们需要它们来指导我们未来的设计工作,它们仍然会为我们提供很好的建议。

Back in chapter 11, Tracy told us that keeping our project goals achievable is an important part of their usefulness. So, the beginning of full production presents a great opportunity to hone and craft our project goals, to bring them into line with everything we’ve discovered. This will keep them current, so that whenever we need them to guide our future design work, they will still offer us good advice.

站立会议

Stand-Up Meetings

如果您尚未将站立会议作为游戏开发实践的常规部分,那么在项目全面制作阶段开始时,这是一个开始的好时机。站立会议是一种基于小组的沟通活动,旨在帮助团队定期了解他们的职责、目标、成就和问题,以保持项目顺利推进。

If you’re not already running stand-up meetings as a regular part of your game development practice, the beginning of the full production phase of a project is a great time to start. A stand-up meeting is a group-based communication activity designed to help teams of people stay in regular touch about their responsibilities, goals, accomplishments, and problems, with the aim of keeping the project moving forward smoothly.

在敏捷软件开发领域,站立会议非常重要且随处可见,有时它们被称为晨间点名会议、每日例会或日常会议。站立会议是站着进行的,目的是让会议时间简短。这是一个聪明的办法,因为人们自然想坐下来,这提醒每个人在会议上发表简短而切中要点的评论。会议围绕三个问题展开,每个团队成员都必须回答这些问题:

Stand-up meetings are important and ubiquitous in the world of Agile software development, where you’ll sometimes find them called the morning roll call meeting, the daily scrum, or just the daily meeting. The meeting is held standing up, which is intended to keep the meeting short. It’s a clever hack, since people naturally want to sit back down, and that reminds everyone to keep their comments in the meeting brief and to the point. The meetings are centered on three questions, which must be answered by every individual team member:

  • 自从我们上次见面以来你在做什么?
  • What did you work on since we last met?
  • 在我们下次会议之前您计划做什么工作?
  • What do you plan to work on before our next meeting?
  • 您面临哪些阻碍您前进的问题?
  • What problems are you facing that are blocking your forward progress?

团队很容易对每个人的工作内容产生分歧。人们会改变自己要做的事情的想法,偏离主题,或者遇到必须解决的问题。检查一下你刚刚做了什么以及你将要做什么有助于建立团队的清晰度。

It is easy for teams to drift apart in their understanding of who is doing what. People change their minds about what they’re going to work on, get sidetracked, or hit a problem that they have to solve. Checking in about what you have just done and what you’re about to do helps build team clarity.

第三个问题——你面临什么问题?——可能是三个问题中最重要的。当我们快速而简洁地总结我们在完成工作时面临的问题(有时称为障碍或阻碍因素)时,我们至少会做三件事:

The third question—what problems are you facing?—can be the most important of the three questions. When we quickly and concisely summarize the problems (sometimes known as impediments or blockers) that we’re facing in completing our work, we do at least three things:

  1. 我们发现存在问题。
  2. We identify that there’s a problem.
  3. 只要向某人大声描述一下,我们就能更清楚地了解问题的确切性质。
  4. We may get a little clearer about the exact nature of the problem simply by describing it out loud to somebody.
  5. 我们创造了一个机会来获得一些帮助来解决该问题。
  6. We create an opportunity to get some help with that problem.

同样,即使是非常小的团队也很容易无法持续讨论阻碍他们进步的问题。人们往往挣扎着,不愿意寻求帮助,认为他们应该能够自己解决挑战。站立会议迫使我们将面临的问题摆到桌面上。如果小组中的任何人认为他们可以提供帮助,他们会主动提供帮助,站立会议结束后讨论将继续进行。

Again, it’s easy for even a very small team to fail to have ongoing discussions about the problems blocking their progress. People tend to struggle through, reluctant to ask for help, thinking that they should be able to figure out challenges themselves. The stand-up meeting forces us to put the problems we’re facing on the table. If anyone in the group thinks they can help, they offer to do so, and the discussion will continue after the stand-up meeting has finished.

在专业团队中,站立会议在每个工作日举行是很常见的。传统上,会议应该在同一时间举行,并且每天都在同一个地方,通常是在一天开始的时候,这样可以促进持续讨论和更新的规律、稳定的节奏。无论你的环境如何,尽可能多地举行站立会议,并注意即使不是所有团队成员都出席,会议也应该举行。

On professional teams, it’s common for stand-up meetings to take place every working day. It’s traditional that the meeting should take place at the same time and in the same place every single day, usually toward the beginning of the day, which promotes a regular, steady rhythm of continual discussion and update. Whatever your setting, hold stand-up meetings as often as you can, and note that the meeting should take place even if not all the team members are present.

站立会议对于保持团队同步始终非常有用,您可能希望从项目一开始就举行站立会议,直到项目结束。您可以在本书的网站 playfulproductionprocess.com 上阅读有关站立会议的更多信息。如果站立会议运作良好,它可以促进责任感,并在团队中培养一种尊重、信任和同意的氛围,因为我们可以清楚地沟通彼此正在做的工作,认可每个人的努力,并帮助彼此度过难关。这为进一步讨论我们的流程奠定了基础,并有助于确保我们都对共同努力的展开路径感到满意。如果您致力于这种简单、省时的做法,站立会议将增强团队的社区。

Stand-up meetings are always valuable for keeping teams in sync, and you might want to run them from the very beginning of your project until the very end. You can read more about stand-up meetings on this book’s website, playfulproductionprocess.com. When they’re working well, stand-up meetings promote accountability and cultivate an atmosphere of respect, trust, and consent on a team, as we clearly communicate with each other about the work we’re doing, recognize everyone’s effort, and help each other through difficulties. This lays the groundwork for further discussions about our process, and helps make sure that we’re all okay with the unfolding path of our shared endeavor. Stand-up meetings will supercharge the community of your team if you commit to this simple, time-efficient practice.

全面投产的里程碑

The Milestones of Full Production

因此,在全面生产过程中有两个重要的里程碑:alpha 和 beta。我们将在接下来的章节中详细介绍它们,但现在预览它们很有用。

So, there are these two major milestones during full production: alpha and beta. We’ll look at them in detail in upcoming chapters, but it’s useful to preview them now.

在 alpha 里程碑中,当所有移动部件都到位时,我们的游戏将“功能齐全”。游戏中所有具有功能的东西都应该在 alpha 阶段就位,至少是粗略的形式。将所有功能独特的东西都融入游戏中尤为重要 - 例如,玩家角色和其他角色的能力、游戏的机制和核心循环、世界中物体的基本行为以及游戏的部分,如界面元素和选项屏幕。此外,在 alpha 里程碑中,我们将使用在顽皮狗采用的技术,其中完成的游戏的所有级别都应该在 alpha 阶段就位,至少是粗略的形式。

At the alpha milestone, our game will be “feature complete,” when all of its moving parts are in place. Everything that does something functional in the game should be in there by alpha, at least in rough form. It’s particularly important to get everything that is functionally unique into the game—for example, the abilities of the player-character and other characters, the mechanics and core loops of the game, the base behaviors of the objects in the world, and parts of the game like interface elements and options screens. In addition, at the alpha milestone we’ll be using a technique we adopted at Naughty Dog, where all of the levels of the finished game should be present at alpha, at least in rough form.

随着我们接近 alpha 里程碑,我们将逐渐放弃使用同心开发,并开始添加占位符内容,以便我们能够构建游戏。alpha 里程碑是制定计划的好时机,我们将找到想要玩我们游戏的人并告诉他们。我们将在第 29 章和第 30 章中讨论这些问题。

As we approach the alpha milestone, we’ll gradually have to move away from using concentric development and will start putting in placeholder content so that we can get the game built out. The alpha milestone is a good time to develop a plan for how we will find people who will want to play our game, and tell them about it. We’ll discuss these in chapters 29 and 30.

在 Beta 阶段,我们的游戏也将“内容完整”,此时整个游戏都已准备就绪。所有艺术、动画和音频资产都将至少达到初次通过的质量水平,游戏的每个部分都将构建完成并正常运行。游戏可能存在漏洞和平衡问题,但通过在 Beta 阶段锁定其内容,我们将一个移动目标变成了可以随后进行完善的稳定目标。

At the beta milestone, our game will also be “content complete,” when the whole game is now in place. All of the art, animation, and audio assets will be present with at least a first-pass level of quality, and every last part of the game will be built out and working. The game may be buggy and have balance problems, but by locking in its content at beta, we turn a moving target into something stable that we can then polish.

如果你曾经参加过戏剧表演,比如在高中时,那么将 alpha 视为技术排练可能会很有用,我们不太担心表演的质量,但我们专注于让演员在正确的时间出现在正确的位置,并注意灯光和声音提示。那么你可以将 beta 视为彩排,我们现在真正关心的是演出和其他一切,尽管一切仍然会有些粗糙。我们进行这些彩排是为了把一些还没有准备好的东西做好,为我们的首演之夜的观众做好一切准备。

If you’ve done some theater, maybe in high school, it might be useful to think of alpha as a technical rehearsal, where we’re not so worried about the quality of the performances, but we’re focused on the actors being in the right places at the right times, and on getting the lighting and sound cues down. Then you can think of beta as the dress rehearsal, where we now do care about the performances and everything else, even though it’s all still going to be a little rough. We go through these rehearsals in order to take something that isn’t quite ready and make everything right for our first-night audience.

alpha 和 beta 里程碑是我们项目最终发布候选里程碑路径上的标志,此时游戏终于完成,并准备在发布前进行彻底测试。

The alpha and beta milestones are markers along the path to our project’s final release candidate milestone, when the game is finally done and done and is ready to be thoroughly tested before being released.

游戏应该按照什么顺序构建?

What Order Should a Game Be Built In?

随着预生产结束和全面生产开始,我们面临一个决定,即下一步要构建游戏的哪个部分。我们刚刚为我们的垂直切片构建了一个代表性的游戏块,其精炼版本通常会成为游戏的早期部分。现在我们必须决定下一步是要开发游戏的开头、中间还是结尾。根据我的经验,我建议您使用幕结构来思考您的游戏,将其分为长度大致相等的四个部分:

As preproduction ends and full production begins, we face a decision about what part of the game to build next. We just built a representative chunk of the game for our vertical slice, a polished version of which will often end up as an early part of the game. Now we have to decide whether we’re going to work on the beginning, the middle, or the end of the game next. Based on my experience, I’d advise you to use an act structure to think about your game in terms of four parts of roughly equal length:

  1. 第一幕,开始
  2. Act one, the beginning
  3. 第二幕的前半部分,中间
  4. The first half of act two, the middle
  5. 第二幕的后半部分,中间
  6. The second half of act two, the middle
  7. 第三幕,结束
  8. Act three, the end

然后按以下顺序构建你的游戏(图 22.2):

And then build your game in this order (figure 22.2):

  1. 第二幕上半场
  2. The first half of act two
  3. 第一幕
  4. Act one
  5. 第三幕
  6. Act three
  7. 第二幕后半段
  8. The second half of act two

图 22.2

Figure 22.2

先构建第一幕很少能成功(我们在第 11 章中提到了这一点)。游戏的开头有很多复杂的工作要做,以教会玩家如何玩法和设定游戏叙事和基调时,你必须考虑游戏的复杂性。游戏还必须非常出色,才能引起轰动并吸引新玩家。如果你从垂直切片开始(希望可以在完成的游戏中使用它而不需要做太多更改),然后构建第二幕的前半部分的其余部分,那么你可以继续掌握游戏的基本元素 - 核心循环和次要游戏循环,以及重要的叙事元素 - 但你不必太担心如何让玩家上手。一旦你比垂直切片更清楚地了解了游戏的核心,那么你就可以构建一个真正优秀的开场序列来完美吸引和留住新玩家的注意力。

Building act one first is rarely successful (we touched on this in chapter 11). The beginning of your game has a lot of complex work to do in teaching the player how to play and in setting up the narrative and tone of the game. It also has to be fantastically good, to make a splash and grab new players. If you start with your vertical slice (which you hopefully can use in the finished game without many more changes) and then build out the rest of the first half of act two, you can continue to get to grips with the fundamental elements of your game—the core loop and secondary gameplay loops, and the important narrative elements—but you don’t have to worry too much yet about how you’re going to onboard the player. Once you’ve got the core of your game even more figured out than the vertical slice allowed, then you’re ready to build a truly excellent opening sequence to perfectly catch and hold a new player’s attention.

人们总是倾向于将第三幕(游戏的结尾)所需的工作留到项目的最后,但根据我的经验,这是错误的。结局与开端同样重要——从戏剧的角度来看,结局甚至更为重要——如果我们将游戏的结局留到最后,我们就有可能耗尽时间,并创造出不令人满意或不够完美的结局。当然,并不是每种类型的游戏都有结局,但许多游戏都有某种结论或解决方案。我遇到过一些游戏设计师,他们认为游戏的结局并不那么重要,因为不是每个玩家都能到达终点。这似乎有些愤世嫉俗。我的游戏设计方法是,我希望尊重和体谅我的每一位玩家,如果我的玩家中哪怕只有一位到达了我的游戏终点,我也希望他们能玩到精彩的游戏。

It’s always tempting to leave the work needed for act three, the end of the game, until the very end of the project, but in my experience, that’s a mistake. Endings are as important as beginnings—even more so, when considered from a dramatic point of view—and if we leave the end of the game until last, we’re in danger of running out of time and creating an ending that is unsatisfying or unpolished. Of course, not every type of game has an ending, but many games have some kind of conclusion or resolution. I’ve met game designers who believe that the end of a game isn’t that important, since not every player will reach the end. That seems cynical. My approach to game design is that I want to show respect and consideration to every last one of my players, and if even one of my players reaches the end of my game, I want there to be something excellent for them to play.

根据我的经验,第二幕的后半部分在内容和长度方面是最灵活和可塑的。这是线性或叙事游戏体验的一部分,它开始将我们在游戏前半部分投入使用的所有游戏玩法和故事串联起来(或缩短)。我们通常有机会根据剩余时间扩展或收缩游戏的这一部分,就像手风琴一样。如果我们在处理游戏结束部分之前就已经完成了游戏结束部分,那么我们心中就会有一个目标,这种约束对设计师非常有用。我不想让这听起来很简单;塑造“中间的后半部分”以达到特定的结局可能是您在项目中所做的最严格的设计工作之一,每个游戏都会带来独特的挑战。

In my experience, the second half of act two is the most pliable and shapeable in terms of its content and its length. This is the part of a linear or narrative game experience that begins to draw together—or cut short—all of the strings of gameplay and story that we put into play in the first half of the game. We usually have opportunities to expand or contract this part of the game like a concertina, based on how much time we have left. If we have already completed the end of the game before working on the part that comes before it, then we have a destination in mind, and that’s the kind of constraint that can be very useful for designers. I don’t want to make this sound simple; shaping the “second half of the middle” so as to arrive at a particular ending might be some of the most exacting design work that you do on the project, and every game will bring a unique challenge.

当然,这里没有硬性规定。电影制作人经常不按顺序拍摄和制作电影,而以非连续的方式制作任何东西都会带来独特的挑战和机遇,因为不同元素之间存在相互依赖关系。处理这些依赖关系的能力是你作为游戏设计师不断提高技能的另一个方面。

Of course, there are no hard and fast rules here. Filmmakers often shoot and assemble movies out of order, and building anything nonsequentially creates unique challenges and opportunities, because of the interdependencies between the different elements. The ability to deal with these dependencies is another aspect of your growing skill as a game designer.

游戏感和趣味性

Game Feel and Juiciness

全面制作的开始阶段是检查项目游戏感和趣味性的好时机。游戏感是“控制的简单乐趣、掌控感和笨拙,以及与虚拟物体互动的触觉。” 1这是电子游戏设计的一个重要方面,但在 Steve Swink 的开创性著作《游戏感觉:游戏设计师的虚拟感觉指南》问世之前,很难讨论这一点,我强烈建议您阅读这本书。史蒂夫非常清楚地分解了使游戏感觉“飘浮”、“反应灵敏”或“松散”的因素,并确定了使游戏感觉良好的实时控制、模拟空间和视听表现等元素。

The beginning of full production is a good time to check in on the game feel and juiciness of your project. Game feel is “the simple pleasure of control, feelings of mastery and clumsiness, and the tactile sensation of interacting with virtual objects.”1 This is an essential aspect of videogame design, but was hard to discuss before the arrival of Steve Swink’s groundbreaking book Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation, which I strongly recommend that you read. Steve very clearly breaks down the factors that go into making a game feel “floaty,” “responsive,” or “loose,” and identifies the elements of real-time control, simulated space, and audiovisual representation that make a game feel good.

据我所知,趣味性这一概念最早是由卡内基梅隆大学 ETC 实验游戏项目成员 Kyle Gray、Kyle Gabler、Shalin Shodhan 和 Matt Kucic 在 2005 年发表于 Gamasutra 的文章《如何在 7 天内制作游戏原型》中提出的。根据该小组的说法,趣味性是“持续且丰富的用户反馈”。

Juiciness is a concept that, to my knowledge, was first coined by Kyle Gray, Kyle Gabler, Shalin Shodhan, and Matt Kucic, the members of the Carnegie Mellon ETC Experimental Gameplay Project, in their 2005 Gamasutra essay, “How to Prototype a Game in under 7 Days.” According to the group, juiciness is “constant and bountiful user feedback.”

当你触摸一个有趣的游戏元素时,它会弹跳、扭动、喷射并发出一点声音。有趣的游戏让人感觉生动,并会响应你的一切操作——只需极少的用户输入,即可产生大量级联动作和响应。它让玩家感到强大并掌控着世界,并通过在每次互动中不断让他们了解自己的表现来指导他们遵守游戏规则。2

A juicy game element will bounce and wiggle and squirt and make a little noise when you touch it. A juicy game feels alive and responds to everything you do—tons of cascading action and response for minimal user input. It makes the player feel powerful and in control of the world, and it coaches them through the rules of the game by constantly letting them know on a per-interaction basis how they are doing.2

多汁性通过动画、声音设计、视觉效果和交互设计表现出来,为玩家创造了丰富的体验,并融入了游戏感,强调输入,创造强烈的响应感,创造感官愉悦,并鼓励进一步互动。Martin Jonasson 和 Petri Purho 在 2012 年欧洲游戏开发者大会独立游戏峰会演讲《多汁或失去》很好地阐述了多汁性的原则和实践及其在游戏设计中的适用性。3

Manifested through animation, sound design, visual effects, and interaction design, juiciness creates a rich experience for the player and feeds into game feel, emphasizing input, creating strong feelings of responsiveness, creating sense-pleasure, and encouraging further interaction. The principles and practice of juiciness, and its applicability to game design, are illuminated nicely by Martin Jonasson and Petri Purho in their GDC Europe 2012 Independent Game Summit talk, Juice It or Lose It.3

同心式开发有助于在开发过程中关注实施细节,从而促进游戏的良好游戏感和趣味性。不过,要小心不要掉进兔子洞:如果我们不小心,游戏感和趣味性很容易浪费我们的实施时间。学会识别你的游戏是否暂时足够好。

Concentric development helps to promote good game feel and juiciness in our games by having us attend to the details of implementation as we go along. Be careful not to vanish down a rabbit hole, though: both game feel and juice can easily eat up our implementation time if we’re not careful. Learn to recognize when your game is good enough for the time being.

全力投入生产

Focuses for Full Production

一旦进入全面制作阶段,最好将注意力集中在 Tanya X. Short 所说的游戏的“易读性”上,我们在第 12 章中讨论过这一点。4人们是否能仅通过观察和倾听就能理解我们的游戏?他们是否能仅通过尝试控制来弄清楚如何玩游戏?他们是否能掌握游戏玩法和故事中的重要概念?这种态度有助于我们完善游戏设计的许多不同方面。它将帮助我们创造一款能够通过多种渠道与与之互动的人进行清晰沟通的游戏,就像任何伟大的设计一样。

Once in full production, it’s good to keep a laserfocus on what Tanya X. Short calls the “legibility” of our game, which we discussed back in chapter 12.4 How easy is it for people to understand our game just by looking at it and listening to it? Can they figure out how to play the game just by experimenting with the controls? Do they pick up on the game’s important concepts in both gameplay and story? This attitude helps us polish many different aspects of the game’s design. It will help us create a game that communicates clearly and through multiple channels with the people who interact with it, just like any great piece of design does.

考虑一下精心设计的手机或椅子中形式和功能的统一;同样的原则也适用于精心设计的电子游戏。正如我们在第 12 章中讨论的那样,我们通过看、听、触摸来了解如何使用某物,并从这些交互中收集意义。保持这种专注有助于我们像用户体验设计师一样思考,这对游戏设计师来说始终是一种有价值的思考方式。我们将在接下来的几章中更详细地讨论这种方法。

Consider the unity of form and function in a well-designed phone or chair; the same principles apply in a well-designed videogame. As we discussed in chapter 12, we understand how to use a thing by looking at it, by listening to it, by touching it, and we gather up meaning from these interactions. Holding this focus helps us think like a user experience designer, which is always a valuable way for a game designer to think. We’ll look at this kind of approach in greater detail in the next few chapters.

一旦我们全面投入生产,我们应继续采用同心开发。我们应该以一种不断完善游戏玩法和制作价值的方式构建游戏,包括视觉效果、音频和触觉设计以及可用性。我们将努力使我们的游戏始终玩起来和控制起来都很好,并且没有可用性问题。专注于易读性还将帮助我们提前计划为游戏的开始创建一个有趣且有效的教程序列——这个序列非常有趣且设计精良,正如我们在第 17 章中讨论的那样,玩家甚至没有意识到他们正在被教导一些东西,而只是拥有一种游戏体验。

Once we’re in full production, we should continue to use concentric development. We should build the game in a way that continually makes it polished in terms of its gameplay and its production values, including its visuals, audio and tactile design, and usability. We will strive to make it so that our game always plays and controls well and has no usability problems. Keeping a focus on legibility will also help us plan ahead toward creating an entertaining and effective tutorial sequence for the start of the game—a sequence that is so interesting and well designed that, as we discussed in chapter 17, the player doesn’t even realize that they’re being taught something, but instead just has an experience of play.

尽管我们现在已经全面投入生产,但在我们致力于项目细节的微观设计、不断在团队外进行游戏测试和连续几轮的设计迭代的过程中,我们仍有可能继续早早失败、快速失败、经常失败。请记住,不要在没有让别人测试你正在做的事情的情况下做太多工作。这将为你创造无数机会来对设计方向进行细微调整。这样做,你可以继续朝着你的项目目标和体验目标前进,同时避开路上的任何障碍。同样,每当你遇到困难时,请回顾你的项目目标。如果你只是重新关注你的体验目标,你的问题的答案可能就在等待你。

Even though we’re now in full production, it’s still possible to continue to fail early, fail fast, fail often as we work on the detailed micro design of our project, with constant playtesting on people outside of our team and successive rounds of design iteration. Remember, don’t do too much work without having someone playtest what you’re making. This will create countless opportunities for you to make small adjustments to the direction of your design. In doing so, you can keep heading toward your project goals and experience goals, while dodging around any obstacles in your path. Again, whenever you get stuck, refer back to your project goals. The answer to your problem is probably lying in wait, if you simply refocus on your experience goals.

在全面生产过程中何时冒险

When to Take a Risk during Full Production

正如我之前所说,有时你可能需要偏离游戏设计宏,才能制作出最好的游戏。我有一个例子,来自《神秘海域》第一款游戏《神秘海域:德雷克的宝藏》的创作。我们的瞄准机制不太融洽,游戏设计师(现任游戏总监) Neil Druckmann 想出了一个主意,来弥合我们使用的第三人称自动瞄准系统与第一人称射击游戏中使用的更谨慎的瞄准系统之间的差距。在全面投入生产后,就在 alpha 里程碑的几个月前,我们制作了一个新的瞄准系统的原型,我们对结果非常满意。

As I said earlier, occasionally you might need to diverge from your game design macro to make the best game you can possibly make. I have an example of this from the creation of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, the first Uncharted game. Our aiming mechanic wasn’t quite gelling, and game designer (now game director) Neil Druckmann had an idea to bridge the gap between the third-person auto-aiming system that we were using and the more deliberate aiming system used in first-person shooters. Well into full production, and just a few months before our alpha milestone, we prototyped a new aiming system and we were very happy with the results.

我们对游戏设计的这一改变产生了深远的影响。突然之间,《神秘海域:德雷克的宝藏》中的敌人遭遇战变得生动起来:它们更具挑战性,但并不太难,而且——非常重要的一点——它们更具戏剧性,因为你必须始终直视你试图击败的敌人。战斗突然感觉更亲密,更像是一对一,而不是一对多。

This single change to our game’s design had a profound effect. Suddenly, the enemy encounters in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune came to life: they were a little more challenging, but not too difficult, and also—very importantly—they were more dramatic, because you always had to be looking straight at the enemy you were trying to defeat. The combat suddenly felt more intimate, more one-on-one than one-versus-many.

更好的是:这种改变并没有破坏游戏。在全面制作过程中对游戏设计进行重大改变总是存在风险。关卡布局是否需要重新设计?现在哪些其他游戏系统需要改变以应对这一变化?这是否会引发进一步改变的多米诺骨牌效应,从而占用您宝贵的全面制作时间?在大多数情况下,从自动瞄准到过肩手动瞄准的这种特殊变化并没有破坏我们的关卡布局,也没有对其他游戏系统产生不良的连锁反应。对我来说,这是一个完美的例子,说明有时您应该在全面制作过程中冒险,因为在预制作结束时您的游戏还没有完全成型。

Even better: the change didn’t break the game. There’s always a risk associated with making a big change to your game’s design during full production. Will the level layout need reworking? What other game systems now need changing in response to this change? Will that trigger a domino effect of further changes that eat up your valuable full production time? This particular change from auto-aiming to over-the-shoulder manual aiming didn’t break our level layout, in most cases, and didn’t have a bad knock-on effect with other game systems. For me, it was the perfect example of how sometimes you should take a risk during full production, when your game hasn’t quite come together at the end of preproduction.

我听其他游戏设计师说过,有时他们的游戏设计直到开发接近尾声时才完全成型,通常是添加、删除或修改一个主要元素,才让游戏最终变得真正有趣。Zach Gage 说 Choice Provisions Inc. 的基于骰子的策略游戏Tharsis就出现了这种情况。5 Ryan Smith 说PlayStation 4 的蜘蛛侠》的蛛网发射机制也出现了同样的情况。6这些教训告诉我们,我们应该有条不紊地按照任务清单进行游戏开发,但我们应该时刻警惕从根本上改变游戏设计以使其更好的机会。

I’ve heard from other game designers that sometimes the design of their game didn’t completely gel until quite close to the end of development, and that usually it was the addition, removal, or modification of one major element that made the game finally become really fun. Zach Gage said that this happened with Choice Provisions Inc.’s dice-based strategy game Tharsis.5 Ryan Smith said that the same happened with the web-shooting mechanics of Spider-Man for the PlayStation 4.6 These lessons show us that we should proceed methodically through our task list to build out our games, but we should always stay alert to the opportunities we have to radically transform the design of our game for the better.

只是要小心谨慎。就《神秘海域:德雷克的宝藏》而言,这是我们在完整制作过程中对游戏机制做出的唯一重大改变。如果我们允许自己做出太多像这样的重大后期改变,我们的游戏几乎肯定不会在最后完成。想象一下你手中只有一两张万能牌。你想把它们留到特殊场合使用,而不是太冲动地使用它们。

Just exercise caution. In the case of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, this was the only major change that we made to the game’s mechanics during full production. If we’d given ourselves license to make too many big, late changes like this, our game would almost certainly have not come together at the end. Think of it like having just one or two wildcards in your hand. You want to save them for special occasions and not use them too impulsively.

如果说构思阶段是玩乐,前期制作阶段是短跑,那么我更愿意将整个制作阶段视为一场更长的赛跑,甚至是马拉松。我们不能再全速奔跑,否则我们会精疲力竭。我们必须找到节奏,持续、系统地工作,调整自己的节奏,这样我们才能剩下一些精力来克服项目最后阶段遇到的障碍。

If the ideation phase was playtime, and the preproduction phase was a sprint, I like to think of the full production phase as a longer footrace, maybe even a marathon. We can’t dash along at top speed anymore, or we’ll burn out. We have to settle into a rhythm and work consistently and systemically, pacing ourselves so that we have some energy left to jump over the hurdles we’ll encounter in the last stages of the project.

我们必须时刻警惕路上的障碍。即使是小小的失误也可能导致我们失败。我们必须时刻留意机会——捷径或奖励,它们将帮助我们的游戏设计取得巨大进步,即使我们已经完成了游戏的构建。在接下来的章节中,我们将介绍一个正式的游戏测试过程,它将帮助我们注意到障碍和机会,让我们走上制作出色游戏的道路。

We must keep our eyes open for obstacles in our path. Even small stumbles might cause us to crash out. And we have to stay on the lookout for opportunities—shortcuts or bonuses that will help our game’s design take great leaps forward, even as we finish building the game. In the coming chapters, we’ll look at a process of formal playtesting that will help us to notice both obstacles and opportunities to keep us on the path to an excellent game.

  1. 1 . Swink,游戏感觉,10。

  2. 1.  Swink, Game Feel, 10.

  3. 2. Kyle Gray、Kyle Gabler、Shalin Shodhan 和 Matt Kucic,《如何在 7 天内制作游戏原型》,Gamasutra,2005 年 10 月 26 日,https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130848/how_to_prototype_a_game_in_under_7_.php

  4. 2.  Kyle Gray, Kyle Gabler, Shalin Shodhan, and Matt Kucic, “How to Prototype a Game in under 7 Days,” Gamasutra, October 26, 2005, https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130848/how_to_prototype_a_game_in_under_7_.php.

  5. 3. Martin Jonasson 和 Petri Purho,《Juice It or Lose It》,GDC Vault,2012 年,https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016487/Juice-It-or-Lose

  6. 3.  Martin Jonasson and Petri Purho, “Juice It or Lose It,” GDC Vault, 2012, https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016487/Juice-It-or-Lose.

  7. 4. Tanya X. Short,“如何以及何时让您的程序性可被玩家识别”,2018 年 12 月 21 日,https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=r6rTMGFXktI 。

  8. 4.  Tanya X. Short, “How and When to Make Your Procedurality Player-Legible,” December 21, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6rTMGFXktI.

  9. 5. The Spelunky Showlike,   《第 8 集:与 Zach Gage 一起设计Tharsis 20181220日,https : //thespelunkyshowlike.libsyn.com/08-designing-tharsis-with-zach-gage

  10. 5.  The Spelunky Showlike, “Episode 8: Designing Tharsis with Zach Gage,” December 20, 2018, https://thespelunkyshowlike.libsyn.com/08-designing-tharsis-with-zach-gage .

  11. 6. Ryan Smith,“2019 年 GDC Microtalks”,2019 年 10 月 28 日,https://www.youtube.com/watch ?v=66skmNruafI 。

  12. 6.  Ryan Smith, “The 2019 GDC Microtalks,” October 28, 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66skmNruafI.

 

 

23 种测试类型

23    Types of Testing

正如我们在本书中一直讨论的那样,游戏测试在健康的游戏设计和开发实践中起着核心作用。但游戏团队在开发的不同阶段使用许多不同类型的测试。将它们组织成类别和子类别很有用:

Playtesting has a central role in healthy game design and development practice, as we’ve been discussing throughout this book. But there are many different types of testing that game teams use at different stages of development. It’s useful to organize these into categories and subcategories:

  • 非正式游戏测试
  • Informal playtesting
  • 我自己进行的非正式游戏测试
  • Informal playtesting by myself
  • 与队友进行非正式的游戏测试
  • Informal playtesting with my teammates
  • 与设计同行进行非正式的游戏测试
  • Informal playtesting with design peers
  • 设计过程测试
  • Design-process testing
  • 正式游戏测试
  • Formal playtesting
  • 用户测试
  • User testing
  • 焦点测试
  • Focus testing
  • QA 测试
  • QA testing
  • 自动化测试
  • Automated testing
  • 面向公众的测试
  • Public-facing testing

让我们逐一看一下。

Let’s look at these one by one.

非正式游戏测试

Informal Playtesting

非正式游戏测试是我们开发人员在设计和开发游戏时自己进行的游戏测试。我们通常在办公桌上和随意交谈中进行测试,而不是像正式游戏测试那样在严格控制的环境中进行测试。

Informal playtesting is the playtesting that we developers do ourselves as we design and develop the game. We usually do it at our desks and in casual conversation, without the tightly controlled situations that characterize formal playtesting.

我自己进行的非正式游戏测试

Informal Playtesting by Myself

当我在开发游戏的某个部分时,我会不时地运行游戏来查看我正在构建的内容。我会玩一会儿,尝试我刚刚实现的内容,评估游戏玩法、控制、图像、声音以及我设计的所有其他方面。也许我想了解游戏的整体体验,或者也许我正在关注一个小细节。这是游戏测试的基本且历史悠久的方法。

As I’m working on some part of a game, I run the game every now and then to look at what I’m building. I play for a while, trying out what I just implemented, evaluating the gameplay, the controls, the graphics, the sound, and every other aspect of my design. Maybe I’m trying to get a sense of the overall experience of the game, or maybe I’m focusing in on one small detail. This is a fundamental and time-honored way of playtesting.

但这种方法也容易出现问题。用这种方法几乎不可能调整游戏难度。在开发游戏的过程中,我(设计师)玩这款游戏的时间可能比几乎任何人都要长得多,我成为了一名超级玩家,通过反复练习磨练技能,并对游戏的运作方式有了深入的了解。这让我很难正确评估游戏的难度,以及其他因素,比如游戏的易读性(人们理解游戏机制或故事的难易程度)。

But it’s also prone to problems. It’s almost impossible to tune the difficulty of a game this way. In the course of developing the game I—the designer—will probably play it for much longer than almost anyone else ever will, becoming a kind of super-player, with skills honed through repetition and an insider’s view of the way the game works. This makes it very hard for me to properly evaluate the game’s difficulty, along with other things like its legibility (how easy it is for people to understand the game mechanics or story).

游戏设计师可以学习在一定程度上克服这些障碍。据说,灵感设计师宫本茂最出色的游戏设计能力之一就是,每天早上他都能以从未见过游戏的方式对待自己正在开发的游戏。要做到这一点需要很强的纪律性,但只要你成功了,你就会对项目产生积极的影响。每个领域的优秀设计都是将自己置于初次遇到某事的人的立场上。培养这种思维习惯,它将在你自己进行的非正式游戏测试中为你提供支持。

Game designers can learn to overcome these obstacles to some degree. It’s said that one of the great game design abilities of inspirational designer Shigeru Miyamoto is that every morning he’s able to approach the game he’s working on as if he has never seen it before. It takes great discipline of mind to do this, but whenever you succeed, you make a positive impact on the project. Great design in every field is about putting yourself in the shoes of someone who is encountering something for the very first time. Cultivate this habit of mind, and it will support you in the informal playtesting you do by yourself.

与队友进行非正式的游戏测试

Informal Playtesting with My Teammates

当你在开发游戏时,需要一双全新的眼光,那么自然而然地,坐在你旁边的人就是非正式游戏测试的最佳人选。在大多数优秀的游戏工作室,每个人都会花一部分时间玩队友正在开发的游戏,这是可以接受的。你们一边玩游戏一边来回聊天,这种对话在正式的游戏测试中是不合适的。在为我们的队友进行非正式的游戏测试时,游戏设计师个人的自发思考能力就会凸显出来。给出这样的反馈还需要基本的沟通技巧,如“夹缝”(第 6 章)和“我喜欢、我希望、如果……会怎样?”(第 12 章)。

When you’re working on your game and you need a fresh pair of eyes, the natural person to call on for an informal playtest is the person sitting next to you. At most great game studios, it is accepted that part of everyone’s day will be spent playing the things being built by their teammates. You chat about the game as you play it in a back-and-forth dialogue that wouldn’t be appropriate during a formal playtest. Informal playtesting for our teammates is where an individual game designer’s ability to think out loud comes to the fore. Giving feedback like this will also call on the foundational communication skills of sandwiching (chapter 6) and “I Like, I Wish, What If ?” (chapter 12).

作为一名让队友测试我的作品的设计师,我必须抵制任何防御的冲动。我需要运用我的倾听技巧来听取别人对我的游戏的真实看法,我不能用“他们只是不明白”或“他们玩得不对”来解释别人的评论。我必须培养我解读评论的能力,并找出我设计中问题的真正根源。与不同的人一起测试可以帮助我进行解读。

As a designer having my work tested by a teammate, I must resist any impulse to become defensive. I need to use my listening skills to hear what someone is really saying about my game, and I must not explain away someone’s remarks as “they just don’t get it” or “they’re not playing it right.” I must cultivate my ability to interpret the comments and root out the true sources of the problems in my design. Testing with a range of different people can help that process of interpretation.

与设计同行进行非正式的游戏测试

Informal Playtesting with Design Peers

我所说的设计同行是指经验丰富的游戏设计师,也可能是与你有相同兴趣和感受的人。请他们来玩你的游戏。这种游戏测试在你遇到设计问题时特别有用。你的设计同行可以用公正的眼光看待你的游戏,并给你一些建议。

By design peer I mean someone who is an experienced game designer, and possibly someone who shares the same interests and sensibilities as you. Call on them and have them play your game. This type of playtesting is particularly useful when you are stuck on some design problem. Your design peer can look at your game with an impartial eye and give you some advice.

设计过程测试

Design-Process Testing

我将接下来的三种测试类型称为设计过程测试,因为它们与我们用来尽可能完善游戏的设计过程相关。您可能会发现这三种测试类型之间存在一些重叠甚至混淆,即使在专业工作室也是如此,但我认为最好承认它们之间的区别。

I call the next three types of testing design-process testing because they relate to the design processes that we use to make our games as good as they can possibly be. You might find some overlap and even confusion between these three types of testing, even at professional studios, but I think it’s good to acknowledge the distinctions between them.

正式游戏测试

Formal Playtesting

这是一种游戏测试,设计师在严格控制的条件下观察从未玩过游戏的人体验游戏,复制玩家在家玩新游戏的体验。设计师试图了解这些新玩家如何接受游戏。他们能学会如何玩吗?他们喜欢玩吗?游戏是否能给他们设计师希望创造的体验?玩家遇到了哪些与游戏设计相关的问题,阻碍他们获得理想的体验?

This is the type of playtesting where designers watch people who have never played their game before experiencing it under tightly controlled conditions, replicating the experience of a player playing a new game at home. The designers are trying to see how these brand-new players receive the game. Are they able to learn how to play it? Do they enjoy playing it? Does the game give them the experience that the designers hoped to create? What kind of problems do the players encounter, related to the design of the game, that prevent them from having the desired experience?

这种游戏测试在所有复杂的人为因素的范围内尽可能客观。顽皮狗经常使用正式的游戏测试,我在工作室工作的八年中大部分时间都密切参与了游戏的正式游戏测试过程。我们将在第 24 章和第 25 章中更多地讨论正式的游戏测试。

This kind of playtesting is as objective as we can make it within the bounds of all the complex human factors at play. Formal playtesting is used a lot at Naughty Dog, and I was closely involved in the process of running formal playtests of our games for most of my eight years at the studio. We’ll be talking about formal playtesting a lot more in chapters 24 and 25.

用户测试

User Testing

这是游戏设计师从“可用性”和“UX”(用户体验)领域继承下来的测试类型。用户测试以界面的设计和使用为中心(尽管它的范围远不止于此),在软件工程中,“可用性是指特定消费者在量化的使用环境中使用软件以有效性、效率和满意度实现量化目标的程度。” 1

This is the type of testing that game designers inherit from the world of “usability” and “UX” (user experience). User testing centers on the design and use of interfaces (although it extends to much more than that), and in software engineering, “usability is the degree to which a software can be used by specified consumers to achieve quantified objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a quantified context of use.”1

从某种角度来看,电子游戏中的一切都是一种界面。不仅仅是菜单和平视显示器,还有角色设计、游戏世界视角和控制方案(“三个 C”),所有这些都在传递信息、塑造互动模式并创造体验。

When viewed in a certain way, everything in a videogame is an interface. Not just the menus and head-up displays, but the design of the character, the view of the game world, and the control scheme—the “three Cs”—all communicate information, shape modes of interaction, and create experience.

因此,您经常会发现“用户测试”这个术语被用来描述我们将在第 24 章和第 25 章中讨论的正式游戏测试,这也许并不奇怪。我们使用的正式游戏测试流程部分源自可用性领域和人机交互 (HCI) 学科。许多游戏工作室聘请具有 HCI 背景的人员来进行正式游戏测试,许多游戏项目都有可用性课程或教员。南加州大学游戏名誉教授 Dennis Wixon帮助开创了《连线》杂志在微软游戏工作室提出的“新游戏科学”。2丹尼斯和他的同事们用来改进游戏设计的科学严谨性和设计流程,对我们在顽皮狗进行的正式游戏测试工作产生了启发。

So perhaps it’s not surprising that you will often find the term user testing used to describe the formal playtesting we’ll look at in chapters 24 and 25. The processes of formal playtesting that we use are partially derived from the worlds of usability and the academic discipline of human-computer interaction (HCI). Many game studios employ people with an HCI background to run their formal playtests, and many games programs have a usability class or faculty. USC Games professor emeritus Dennis Wixon helped to pioneer what Wired magazine called a “new science of play” at Microsoft Game Studios.2 The scientific rigor and design process that Dennis and his colleagues used to improve the design of their games was an inspiration to the formal playtesting work that we did at Naughty Dog.

然而,我认为将用户测试和正式游戏测试完全混为一谈是错误的。正如我们将在下一章中看到的那样,正式游戏测试是一种有点主观的做法,设计师通常需要根据自己的直觉或艺术感性做出决定。相比之下,用户测试是一种非常严格、彻底、明显科学的做法,我们可以通过应用启发式方法并以客观的方式衡量结果来确保实现特定的设计结果。

However, I think that it’s a mistake to entirely conflate user testing and formal playtesting. As we’ll see in the next chapter, formal playtesting is a somewhat subjective practice, where designers are often called on to make decisions based on their intuition or artistic sensibility. By contrast, user testing is a very rigorous, thorough, distinctly scientific practice, where we can be sure of achieving a particular design outcome by applying heuristics and measuring outcomes in an objective way.

焦点测试

Focus Testing

令人困惑的是,一些游戏工作室可能会将他们的正式游戏测试或用户测试流程称为“焦点测试”。但焦点测试与正式游戏测试或用户测试截然不同。焦点测试是营销专业和学术学科的一部分,是与客户建立关系并让客户满意的业务流程。

Confusingly, some game studios might call either their formal playtesting or user testing processes “focus testing.” But focus testing is very different from either formal playtesting or user testing. Focus testing is a part of the professional and academic discipline of marketing, the business process of creating relationships with and satisfying customers.

焦点测试通过召集焦点小组来进行,焦点小组的成员是根据心理和/或人口统计信息从公众中选出的,这些信息将他们标记为被测试产品、服务、概念或广告的潜在客户。焦点小组成员通常会获得报酬。焦点小组会议由经过专门培训的研究人员主持,研究人员会在受控条件下向成员提出精心设计的问题。小组的回答会被记录下来,并可能鼓励小组之间的对话。他们谈论他们对被测试事物的看法、观点、信念和态度。测试结果随后由研究人员分析,并由项目中的利益相关者讨论。

A focus test is run by bringing together a focus group, the members of which are selected from the general public based on psychographic and/or demographic information that mark them as potential customers for the product, service, concept, or advertisement being tested. Focus group members are typically paid for their time. The focus group meeting is led by a specially trained researcher, who asks the members carefully designed questions under controlled conditions. The group’s responses are recorded, and conversation between the group may be encouraged. They talk about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes toward the thing being tested. The results of the test are later analyzed by researchers and discussed by the stakeholders in the project.

在游戏开发早期,当我们想要检查游戏创意是否会受到潜在受众的欢迎时,焦点测试就非常有用。如果我们的游戏预算非常大,并且我们想确保我们的资金投入是明智的,那么焦点测试就尤其有用。用户研究员兼游戏设计师 Kevin Keeker 在 Tracy Fullerton 的游戏设计研讨会上发表的论文“充分利用焦点小组”中,就如何有效使用焦点测试提出了很多很好建议。3

Focus tests can be valuable early in a game’s development, when we want to check that our ideas for the game are going to be received well by its possible audience. They are especially valuable if the budget for our game is very big, and we want to try to ensure that we’re investing our money wisely. User researcher and game designer Kevin Keeker offers a lot of great advice about the effective use of focus tests in his essay “Getting the Most Out of Focus Groups” in Tracy Fullerton’s Game Design Workshop.3

质量保证测试

QA Testing

任何游戏工作室测试工作的先锋都是其 QA(质量保证)部门,有时简称为测试。QA 是一门技术含量极高的专业学科,拥有游戏开发领域最成熟的流程之一。QA测试员的工作首先是寻找漏洞:对玩家体验产生负面影响的技术问题和内容问题。这些漏洞可能很难发现,因为它们只在游戏中发生一些罕见的事件序列或一些不寻常的元素组合时才会发生。QA 测试员能够以个人开发者无法做到的方式探索游戏的巨大可能性空间。通过这种方式,QA 使我们能够拥有自己喜欢的游戏。

The vanguard of any game studio’s testing effort is its QA (quality assurance) department, sometimes known simply as test. QA is a highly skilled professional discipline and has one of the most mature set of processes anywhere in game development. A QA tester’s job is, first, to look for bugs: technical problems and content problems that negatively impact the player’s experience. These bugs might be hard to find because they only happen when some rare sequence of events unfolds in the game or when some unusual combination of elements comes together. QA testers are able to explore the vast possibility space of a game in a way that individual developers simply cannot. In doing so, QA makes it possible for us to have the games that we love.

QA 按照测试计划测试游戏,该计划描述了如何测试游戏以及要查找哪些类型的问题。当 QA 发现问题时,他们会将问题记录在错误数据库中,并与游戏的其他开发人员共享。QA 经理会根据对谁将修复错误的评估,将错误传递给学科负责人(首席美工、首席程序员等)。这可能是代码问题,需要工程师修复;可能是设计问题,需要游戏设计师修复;也可能是纹理映射错误,需要美工修复。

QA tests the game by following a test plan that describes how the game will be tested and what kind of problems are being looked for. When QA finds problems, they document them in a bug database that is shared with the game’s other developers. A QA manager passes the bugs to the discipline leads (the lead artist, the lead programmer, and so on) based on their evaluation of who will fix the bug. Maybe it’s a problem with the code that an engineer will need to fix, it might be a design problem for a game designer, or it might be a badly mapped texture that an artist will correct.

然后,学科负责人将错误传递给他们团队中的个人开发人员,由他们修复错误,将他们的更改签入团队的版本控制系统,并将每个错误标记为已修复。(如果他们无法修复它,找不到报告的错误,或者不同意它是一个错误,那么他们可以适当地标记该错误,并将其传递以进行进一步评估。)在下一个版本中,标记为已修复的错误将返回 QA,然后 QA 对其进行“回归”,再次检查以确保问题确实已经消失。

The discipline leads then pass the bugs on to the individual developers in their group who fix them, check in their changes to the team’s version control system, and mark each bug as fixed. (If they can’t fix it, can’t find the bug as reported, or disagree that it’s a bug, then they can mark the bug appropriately, and it gets passed onward for further evaluation.) In the next build, the bugs marked as fixed go back to QA who then “regresses” them, checking again to make sure that the problem has indeed gone away.

漏洞数据库最终会成为每个团队成员生活中的重要部分,修复漏洞数据库中报告的问题将占用单个开发人员一天的大部分时间。QA 测试人员不仅仅是漏洞发现者和修复检查者——他们是游戏设计智慧的绝佳来源,能够深入了解游戏为玩家带来的体验。那些被游戏 QA 吸引的人通常对游戏充满热情,知识渊博。他们通常是具有发达的游戏设计敏感性的分析性思想家,并且充满了绝妙的想法。我一直会特意去寻找工作室的 QA 人员,向他们表示敬意,询问他们的工作,并开始向他们学习。

The bug database eventually becomes an important part of every team member’s life, and fixing the problems reported in the bug database will take up a large part of an individual developer’s day. QA testers are much more than bug-finders and fix-checkers—they are a superb source of game design wisdom and gain great insight into the experience that a game is giving its players. The people who are drawn to games QA as a profession are usually highly passionate and vastly knowledgeable about games. They are often analytical thinkers with developed game design sensibilities and are brimming with excellent ideas. I have always made it a point to seek out the people working in QA at my studio, pay my respects to them, ask them about their work, and begin to learn from them.

QA 是一门开发学科,从事 QA 工作的人员是游戏开发者。根据本书的理念,即接触游戏的每个人都是游戏设计师之一(第 4 章概述),我们应该记住从事 QA 工作的人员也是游戏设计师。我们应该邀请 QA 参与设计和制作过程的每个阶段,紧密有效地合作,尽我们所能制作出最好的游戏。

QA is a development discipline, and people who work in QA are game developers. In line with this book’s philosophy that everyone who touches a game is one of its designers (outlined in chapter 4), we should remember that the people who work in QA are game designers too. We should invite QA into the design and production process at every stage, working together closely and effectively to make the very best games that we can.

自动化测试

Automated Testing

自从计算机科学出现以来,软件开发人员一直在创建机制来自动测试他们编写的代码。在自动化测试中,编写特殊软件来测试其他软件,以便快速高效地以无错误的方式执行重复的人工任务,或执行人类难以进行的测试。

Software developers have been creating mechanisms to automatically test the code they’ve written for almost as long as computer science has existed. In automated testing, special software is written to test other software, either to quickly and efficiently perform a repetitive human task in an error-free way, or to perform tests that would be hard for a human to conduct at all.

单元测试、集成测试和服务器负载测试是自动化测试的著名示例,其中测试模块和代码组和数据以查看它们是否正常工作。游戏的自动化测试可能会通过控制器、键盘和鼠标或触摸屏模拟人类对游戏的输入。自动化测试可能会使用编程接口完全绕过输入系统,并直接与代码和内容交互。

Unit testing, integration tests, and server load tests are famous examples of automated testing, where modules and groups of code and data are tested to see if they are working correctly. Automated tests of a game might simulate human input to the game through a controller, keyboard and mouse, or touchscreen. An automated test might use a programming interface to bypass the input system altogether, and interface directly with the code and content.

自动化测试如今已成为游戏程序员工具包中一个被认可且重要的组成部分。我在顽皮狗工作期间,该工作室才华横溢的工程团队开始使用“冒烟测试”(也称为置信度测试、健全性测试和版本验证测试)来确保我们的隔夜版本不存在与内存和关卡加载相关的任何问题。这确保了我们的 QA 部门每天早上都会有一个没有任何基本问题的版本可供测试。

Automated testing is now an accepted and important part of the game programmer’s toolkit. While I was at Naughty Dog, the studio’s talented engineering team began to use “smoke testing” (also known as confidence testing, sanity testing, and build verification testing) to make sure that our overnight builds didn’t have any problems related to memory and level loading. This ensured that our QA department would have a build to test every morning that didn’t have any basic problems.

鉴于游戏开发是一个以人为本的艺术领域,我认为自动化测试不太可能完全取代人工测试,但代码能够比人类更快、更彻底地检查某些类型的问题和错误,这是有道理的,因为计算机擅长以完美的精度完成注重细节、枯燥、重复的任务。我预计机器学习将帮助我们以新的方式测试游戏,就​​像它已经开始在我们生活的语音识别和图像处理等领域发挥神奇作用一样。

Given that game development is a human-centered, artistic field, I think that it’s unlikely that automated testing will ever completely replace human testing, but it makes sense that code can check for certain kinds of problems and errors more quickly and thoroughly than a human being can, since computers are good at doing detail-oriented, boring, repetitive tasks with flawless precision. I expect that machine learning will help us test our games in new ways, just as it has begun to work magic in areas of our lives like speech recognition and image manipulation.

面向公众的测试

Public-Facing Testing

面向公众的测试是我们在游戏完全完成之前向公众发布游戏(可能以某种有限的形式)的一种测试。这包括公开 Beta 测试、抢先体验测试,以及在全球发布之前在小型测试市场发布游戏。

Public-facing testing is the kind of testing we do by releasing our game to the public before it’s completely finished, perhaps in some limited form. This would include public beta testing, early access testing, and releasing a game into a small test market before its global release.

在公开 Beta 测试中,游戏开发商或发行商允许公众下载并在达到 Beta 里程碑后玩游戏,但游戏完全完成前几周或几个月。(在公开 Beta 中,更常见的情况是不会发布整个游戏,而只发布其中的一部分,可能是演示级别。)

In public beta testing, a game developer or publisher allows members of the general public to download their game and play it after the beta milestone has been reached, but some weeks or months before it is completely finished. (It’s more common in a public beta not to release the whole game but just a part of it, maybe a demo level.)

开发人员从公开 Beta 测试中收到很多不同类型的反馈。他们可以仔细检查服务器负载测试的结果,以确保他们的服务器可以处理数千甚至数十万玩家同时下载和玩游戏的负载。开发人员可以收集有关玩家在游戏中活动的指标数据,并以此检查游戏的设计是否按预期运行。他们可以查找与帧速率或延迟有关的性能问题以及安全问题。早期用户通常会探测游戏中的安全漏洞,只是为了看看他们是否可以破解他们的分数。开发人员还可以从公开 Beta 测试人员那里直接获得有关他们在游戏中的体验的反馈,就像我们在正式游戏测试中所做的那样,使用调查或访谈。

Developers receive a lot of different types of feedback from a public beta test. They can double-check the results of their server load tests to make sure their servers can handle the load of thousands—or hundreds of thousands—of players downloading and playing their game all at once. The developers can gather metrics data about the players’ activities in the game, and in doing so can check to see if the game’s design is working as intended. They can look for performance issues to do with frame rate or lag and for problems with security. Early users will often probe for security loopholes in a game, if only to see if they can hack their score. The developers can also get direct feedback from their public beta testers about their experiences in the game, just as we would in a formal playtest, using surveys or interviews.

在抢先体验测试中,游戏在功能或内容尚未完成之前就已发布,甚至可能已售出。这种做法在专业游戏设计领域如今已很常见,借助 Steam 抢先体验销售和 Itch.io 等平台,游戏开发者可以利用社交媒体,比以往更早、更轻松、更大规模地将玩家带入设计和开发过程。面向公众的测试还有助于为游戏打造社区和激发玩家热情。

In early access testing, the game is released—and maybe even sold—before it’s either feature complete or content complete. This practice is now common in the world of professional game design, with Steam Early Access sales and platforms like Itch.io making it possible for game developers to use social media to bring their players into the design and development process earlier, more easily, and at greater scale than ever before. Public-facing testing can also help build community and excitement for a game.

现在我们已经了解了一些不同类型的测试,我们将在接下来的两章中更深入地研究正式的游戏测试,它为游戏设计师提供了一个有价值的工具,使他们的设计过程保持正轨。

Now that we’ve looked at some different types of testing, we will, in the next two chapters, take a deeper look at formal playtesting, which gives game designers a valuable tool for keeping their design process on track.

  1. 1. “可用性”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability

  2. 1.  “Usability,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability.

  3. 2. Clive Thompson,《光环 3:微软实验室如何发明新的游戏科学》,《连线》,2007 年 8 月 21 日,https://www.wired.com/2007/08/ff-halo-2/

  4. 2.  Clive Thompson, “Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play,” Wired, August 21, 2007, https://www.wired.com/2007/08/ff-halo-2/.

  5. 3.Fullerton《游戏设计工作坊》,第 4 版,191。

  6. 3.  Fullerton, Game Design Workshop, 4th ed., 191.

 

 

24 准备正式游戏测试

24    Preparing for a Formal Playtest

在我们充满乐趣的制作过程的开始阶段,在构思和预制作阶段,我们设计和构建游戏的方法非常自由和艺术化,并且结构化程度足以帮助我们在正确的时间做出正确的决定。现在我们已经全面投入生产,我们并没有停止凭直觉工作,而是按照我们制定的宏观和时间表计划,转向更理性的工作方式。

At the beginning of our playful production process, during the ideation and preproduction phases, our approach to designing and building our game is very free-form and artistic, and just structured enough to help us make the right decisions at the right times. Now that we’re in full production, we don’t stop working intuitively, but—following the plans that we’ve laid out with our macro and schedule—we do shift toward a more rational way of working.

我们现在正朝着 alpha 和 beta 两个主要里程碑迈进,alpha 阶段,我们的游戏功能将完备(所有主要机制都将在游戏中的某个地方出现),beta 阶段,我们的游戏内容将完备(游戏中的所有内容都将在后期制作中出现并准备进行润色)。在从主观到客观、从直觉到理性的转变过程中,我们如何确保顺利完成这一转变?正式的游戏测试可以帮助我们实现这一点。

We’re now on our way to the major milestones of alpha, when our game will be feature complete (all of its major mechanisms will be somewhere in the game) and beta, when our game will be content complete (everything that’s going to be in the game will be in and ready for polish during postproduction). How can we be sure that we’re making this transition well, as we move from subjective to objective, from intuitive to rational? Formal playtesting can help us with this.

顽皮狗的正式游戏测试

Formal Playtesting at Naughty Dog

我怀着对游戏测试的热情加入顽皮狗,很高兴能与 Evan Wells 和 Mark Cerny 合作,他们已经帮助顽皮狗在工作室建立了一套出色的正式游戏测试实践。顽皮狗(及其母公司 Sony Interactive Entertainment)成立的大部分时间里都在进行正式的游戏测试,即通过在线广告招募普通公众,带他们进入工作室,并付费玩正在开发中的游戏。这些游戏测试员事先并不知道他们将要玩什么游戏,也不知道他们要测试的游戏是谁制作的。我们希望测试者在玩我们的游戏时不会带有任何先入为主的偏见,无论是正面的还是负面的。

I joined Naughty Dog with a passion for playtesting and was excited to work with Evan Wells and Mark Cerny, who had already helped institute a great set of formal playtesting practices at the studio. For much of its lifetime, Naughty Dog (and its parent company Sony Interactive Entertainment) had been running formal playtests where members of the general public are recruited through an online advertisement, brought into the studio, and paid to play a game under construction. These playtesters don’t know ahead of time what game they are going to play or who is making the game they are going to test. We wanted people who would come to our game without preexisting biases, either positive or negative.

我在顽皮狗工作时,我们与第三方代理合作,该代理会审查所有响应广告的人提供的信息,并为我们每次正式游戏测试提供十名游戏测试员。游戏测试员的游戏体验和人口统计信息反映了我们认为我们的游戏会吸引的玩家类型,这些玩家的年龄、性别和游戏历史各不相同。像许多游戏开发者一样,我们将这些人称为“Kleenex”游戏测试员;就像纸巾一样,我们只会使用他们一次。在正式的游戏测试中,您需要从未玩过您的游戏的人来准确了解游戏的当前状态。

While I was at Naughty Dog, we worked with a third-party agent who reviewed the information given by everyone who responded to the advertisement and gave us ten playtesters for each formal playtest. The gaming experience and demographic information of the playtesters reflected the type of player we thought that our game would appeal to, within a spread of ages, genders, and gaming histories. Like many game developers, we would refer to these folks as “Kleenex” playtesters; like a paper tissue, we would only use them once. In a formal playtest, you need people who have never played your game before in order to get an accurate impression of its current state.

我加入顽皮狗协助完成《Jak 3》时,我们在整个项目期间进行了大概四五次游戏测试。对于我在顽皮狗参与制作的最后一款游戏《神秘海域 3》,我们在游戏开发过程中进行了 21 次测试,从项目结束前大约六个月开始,大约每周一次。我们在内部专门的游戏测试室进行正式的游戏测试。沿着一面墙排列着十个游戏测试站。每个测试站都有一台电视、一台联网的 PlayStation(装有我们正在测试的游戏版本)和一副插在电视上的耳机,这样每个玩家只能听到自己测试站的游戏版本。游戏测试运行时,游戏设计师会坐在房间的另一边,观看测试员的游戏。如今,顽皮狗有专门的游戏测试实验室,里面有一面单向镜将测试员与观察他们的设计师隔开,这是为用户研究而建造的“观察套房”的共同特征。

When I joined Naughty Dog to help finish Jak 3, we ran perhaps four or five playtests across the course of the whole project. For Uncharted 3, the last game that I worked on at Naughty Dog, we ran twenty-one tests over the course of the game’s development, beginning around six months before the end of the project—about one a week. We ran our formal playtests in-house in a dedicated playtest room. Along one wall would be a row of ten playtest stations. Each station had a TV, a networked PlayStation with the build of the game we were testing, and a pair of headphones plugged into the TV, so that each player could only hear their station’s version of the game. As the playtest ran, the game’s designers would sit on the other side of the room, watching the playtesters play. Today, Naughty Dog has a dedicated playtest lab with a one-way mirror separating the playtesters from the designers watching them, a common feature of the “observation suites” built for user studies.

在《神秘海域 3》的游戏测试中,我们使用联网数字视频录像机,在测试人员玩游戏时将游戏视频录制到我们的网络中。我们可以稍后查看此视频,以更仔细地观察特定玩家在游戏中的行为。当我们发现游戏特定部分存在问题模式,或者想弄清楚特定玩家遇到特定问题(例如在游戏的某个部分停留时间异常长)时,我们就会这样做。(值得注意的是,这些方法是由从事用户测试的 HCI(人机交互)研究人员发明的,他们在游戏行业采用这些方法之前已经使用了一段时间。)如今,顽皮狗还录制了游戏测试人员的面部、手部和整体姿势的视频。这些镜头可以与游戏镜头一起播放,以扩大玩家在游戏中每个时刻的行为和感受,并且视频可以流式传输到工作室中任何有兴趣了解游戏测试情况的​​人的桌面上。

For the playtesting of Uncharted 3, we used networked digital video recorders that captured video of the game to our network as the testers played. We could review this video later to get a closer look at a particular player’s actions in the game. We would do this when we’d either spotted a pattern of problems in a particular part of the game or to figure out what was going on when a particular player had encountered a specific problem, like getting stuck in one part of the game for an unusually long time. (It’s important to note that these methodologies were invented by HCI (human-computer interaction) researchers working in user testing, who used them for some time before they were adopted by the game industry.) Today, Naughty Dog also records video of the faces, hands, and overall posture of their playtesters. This footage can be run alongside the gameplay footage to give an expanded sense of what the player is doing and feeling at each moment in the game, and the video can be streamed to the desktop of anyone in the studio who is interested to see what’s going on in the playtest.

我们在各个站点之间放置了屏幕,这样玩家就无法看到彼此的游戏,即使是无意中。如果你的邻居在游戏中比你领先很多,那么看到他们解决谜题、以特定方式使用武器,甚至只是爬上壁架,你的游戏过程和进步能力就很容易受到影响。

We put screens between the stations so that the players couldn’t see each other’s games, even accidentally. If your neighbor is further ahead of you in the game, your playthrough and your ability to progress could easily be affected by seeing them solve a puzzle, use a weapon in a particular way, or even just climb up onto a ledge.

我们会要求玩家在游戏测试期间不要说话,而且由于我们希望尽可能科学,所以我们会毫不留情地不给他们任何帮助。在玩家玩游戏时,游戏会记录有关游戏过程的某些信息,并将其发布到我们网络的数据库中。我们称之为指标数据,我将在第 26 章中讨论它。

We would ask our players not to talk during the playtest, and because we wanted to be as scientific as possible we would be ruthless about never giving them any help. As the players played, the game would record certain information about the gameplay session and post it to a database on our network. We called this our metrics data, and I’ll discuss it in chapter 26.

在游戏测试结束时,我们会让游戏测试者填写一份关于他们体验的调查问卷,然后我们会进行一次离职访谈,我们会把访谈记录下来以供日后参考。从调查问卷中获得的数字信息(定量数据)帮助我们追踪玩家对游戏的看法在测试过程中的变化。我们几乎总是能看到缓慢、渐进的改进,这让我们保持理智,知道游戏正在逐渐变得更好。我们还会得到一些有趣的、不太客观的游戏设计观点(定性数据)从离职面谈中可以看出。指标数据将为我们提供关于游戏可玩性的更客观的信息。

At the end of the playtest, we would have the playtesters fill out a survey about their experience, and then we would conduct an exit interview, which we recorded for our later reference. The numerical information (quantitative data) that we got from the surveys helped us to track the changes in the players’ perceptions of the game from test to test. We would almost always see a slow, gradual improvement, which helped us stay sane in the knowledge that the game was gradually getting better. We would also get some interesting, if rather less objective, game design perspectives (qualitative data) from the exit interview. The metrics data would give us even more objective information about how playable the game is.

在本章的剩余部分和接下来的两章中,我将向您更详细地介绍所有这些过程,因为我会向您介绍一个正式的游戏测试过程,每个人都可以使用它来确保他们的游戏尽可能的好。

In the remainder of this chapter and the next two chapters, I’ll talk you through all these processes in greater detail, as I present you with a formal playtesting process that everyone can use to ensure that their games are as good as they can possibly be.

适合每个人的正式游戏测试实践

A Formal Playtesting Practice for Everyone

在第 5 章中,我们列出了一些有助于游戏测试的指导方针。我们在第 12 章中扩展并加强了这些指导方针,以便在整个项目过程中提供严格的游戏测试实践。

In chapter 5, we laid out a few guidelines to help us playtest. We expanded and tightened up these guidelines in chapter 12 to give us a rigorous playtesting practice to use throughout the course of our project.

当我们在游戏创作中达到某个阶段时,通常是在 alpha 里程碑之前,过渡到更严格的游戏测试形式很重要,我们可以依靠这种形式获得有关游戏的清晰信息。我们希望获得有关游戏的客观事实和主观观点,以便我们可以对游戏设计过程进行必要的最终修正。我们可以随着时间的推移跟踪这些设计变化,以确保我们所做的最后修改能够改善游戏,而不是使游戏变得更糟。我们将这个过程称为正式的游戏测试,我们可以利用它来更加自信地确保我们的游戏能够以我们希望的方式吸引玩家。我们可以完成从直觉制作到客观评估的转变,并准备发布游戏。

When we reach a certain point in the creation of our game, usually just before the alpha milestone, it’s important to transition into an even more rigorous form of playtesting, one that we can count on to give us clear information about our game. We want to get both objective facts and subjective points of view about the game, so that we can make any necessary final corrections to the course of our game’s design. We can track these design changes over time to make sure that the last modifications we’re making are improving the game, not making it worse. We will call this process formal playtesting, and we can use it to become ever more confident that our game is landing with players in the way that we wish it to land. We can complete our transition from intuitive making to objective evaluation and can prepare to ship the game.

定期进行正式的游戏测试将成为游戏开发过程中至关重要的一部分,它使我们能够有条不紊地解决较小的设计问题,从而留出时间来解决更重要的游戏设计问题。正如 Mark Cerny 最近向我描述的那样:“一旦制作结构化为定期进行游戏测试,团队内部和外部的对话就不再是‘您认为玩家会理解 XYZ 吗?’或‘这里的难度合适吗?’或‘按住 L1 然后按下 CIRCLE 是否足够直观?’这些可能是耗时的话题,但因为我们知道游戏测试会快速解决这些问题,所以我们现在可以自由地将时间花在游戏中更大的结构性问题上(例如,玩家是否对玩家角色产生了足够的同理心?),而不是花在这些细节上。”

Regular formal playtesting then becomes a vital part of the game development process, allowing us to work through smaller design issues in a methodical way, leaving us time to address more important game design topics. As Mark Cerny recently described it to me: “Once production is structured to have regular playtesting, the dialogue within and without the team is no longer ‘Do you think the players will understand XYZ?’ or ‘Is the difficulty here appropriate?’ or ‘Is holding L1 and then pressing CIRCLE sufficiently intuitive?’ These can be time consuming topics, but since we know that playtesting will quickly resolve them we are now free to spend our time on bigger structural issues in our game (for example, is the player building sufficient empathy with the player-character?) and not on these details.”

现在是时候在第 12 章中描述的游戏测试过程中添加一些额外的指导方针了。新的指导方针是以粗体显示在下面的列表中。

So now it’s time to add a few extra guidelines to the playtesting process described in chapter 12. The new guidelines are in bold in the list below.

  • 准备一个健康的游戏版本进行测试,不含任何错误和重大的游戏问题。
  • Prepare a healthy build of the game to test, free of bugs and major gameplay problems.
  • 使用正式的游戏测试脚本。
  • Use a formal playtest script.
  • 如果需要的话,使用预测试调查。
  • Use a pretest survey, if desired.
  • 游戏测试员和设计师都应佩戴耳机。
  • Use headphones for both playtesters and designers.
  • 如果有必要的话,准备一份控制备忘单。
  • Prepare a controls cheat sheet if necessary.
  • 准备一份书面提示或帮助,以帮助玩家解决任何已知的游戏问题或功能问题。
  • Prepare a written hint or helper to help players with any known gameplay issues or functional issues.
  • 建议你的游戏测试员大声说出自己的想法和感受。
  • Suggest that your playtester thinks and feels out loud.
  • 如果合适,使用内容警告。
  • Use content warnings if appropriate.
  • 开始游戏测试。
  • Begin the playtest.
  • 注意观察游戏测试员的游戏体验。
  • Be observant of your playtester’s experience of the game.
  • 观察游戏测试员的行为和言论,并将其全部记录下来。
  • Observe what the playtester does and says and note it all down.
  • 根本不要帮助你的游戏测试员。
  • Don’t help your playtester at all.
  • 如果需要,可以在游戏测试期间录制游戏和游戏测试员的音频和视频(经游戏测试员同意)。
  • If desired, record audio and video of both the game and the playtester during the playtest session (with the playtester’s consent).
  • 使用遥测来捕获有关游戏测试会话的指标数据。
  • Use telemetry to capture metrics data about the playtest session.
  • 注意时间:您需要时间进行调查和离职面谈。
  • Keep an eye on the time: you need time for the survey and the exit interview.
  • 测试结束后,在进行任何对话之前,向游戏测试员提供正式的游戏测试调查。
  • After the test, and before any conversation, give the playtester the formal playtest survey.
  • 调查结束后,使用您准备好的离职面试问题。
  • After the survey, use your prepared exit interview questions.
  • 写下或者记录离职面试的答案。
  • Either write down or record the exit interview answers.
  • 不要成为游戏解释者。
  • Don’t be a game-explainer.
  • 不要灰心。
  • Don’t get discouraged.

如您所见,我们在游戏开发的大部分过程中一直使用正式的游戏测试流程!这很好:这意味着我们在游戏测试方面一直很严格,这为我们下一阶段的工作奠定了坚实的基础。让我们来看看这些新指南,它们围绕三个新工具:脚本、调查和一些准备好的离职面试问题。

As you can see, we’ve been using a formal playtest process for most of the course of development of our game! This is good: it means that we’ve been rigorous all along in our approach to playtesting, and that has given us a solid foundation for this next stage of our work. Let’s take a look at these new guidelines, which center on three new tools: a script, a survey, and some prepared exit interview questions.

准备一个健康的游戏版本进行测试,避免出现任何错误和重大游戏问题

Prepare a Healthy Build of the Game to Test, Free of Bugs and Major Gameplay Problems

在游戏测试开始前(通常至少提前三天),我们应该准备好一个稳定、健康、没有任何问题的游戏版本,以免影响游戏测试。这个准备阶段通常会给缺乏经验的游戏开发者带来巨大的“麻烦”。开发者经常忍不住要一直修改游戏,直到游戏测试开始。问题会破坏游戏,使其无法测试,并使安排游戏测试所花费的所有时间、金钱和精力化为泡影。因此,在游戏测试之前,必须创建一个稳定且健康到可以进行游戏测试的游戏版本,并检查是否存在重大问题。如果开发者希望在游戏测试前几天对游戏进行小幅修改,那么他们之前准备和检查过的稳定、健康的版本将成为“安全版本”,必须在游戏测试当天安装并准备使用,以防他们后期的更改引入破坏游戏测试的问题。

Well in advance of the playtest—usually at least three days ahead—we should prepare a build of our game that is stable, healthy, and free of any issues that would prevent it from being playtested. This stage of preparation regularly creates a huge “gotcha” for less-experienced game developers. Developers are often tempted to keep making changes to their game right up until a playtest. Problems get introduced that break the game rendering it untestable and nullifying all the time, money, and effort that has gone into arranging the playtest. So it’s imperative that a build of the game that is stable and healthy enough to be playtested is created and checked for major issues ahead of the playtest. If the developers wish to make small changes to the game in the days leading up to the playtest, then the stable, healthy build they previously prepared and checked becomes a “safety build” and must be installed and ready to use on the day of the playtest, as a fallback in case their late changes introduced playtest-destroying problems.

使用正式的游戏测试脚本

Use a Formal Playtest Script

在正式的游戏测试或用户研究环境中,进行测试的人通常会使用书面脚本来确定向每个游戏测试员说了什么。遵循脚本意味着每个游戏测试员都会收到完全相同的信息。您可以在下面阅读更多相关信息。

In a formal playtest or a user research setting, it’s traditional for the person running the test to use a written script to determine exactly what is said to each playtester. Having a script to follow means that every playtester receives exactly the same information. You can read more about this below.

如果需要,可以使用预测试调查

Use a Pretest Survey, if Desired

一些研究人员还使用预测试调查,为每个游戏测试者设定基线,然后将其与测试后调查中获得的数据进行比较。例如,我们可能会询问游戏测试者的感受,看看他们在测试后是否处于不同的情绪状态。如果您使用预测试调查,请将您所说的内容写入游戏测试脚本中。

Some researchers also use a pretest survey, to set a baseline for each playtester that can then be compared to the data received from the post-test survey. For example, we might ask a playtester how they’re feeling, to see if they’re in a different emotional state after the test. If you use a pretest survey, work what you say about it into your playtest script.

如果需要,可以在游戏测试过程中录制游戏和游戏测试员的音频和视频(经游戏测试员同意)

If Desired, Record Audio and Video of Both the Game and the Playtester during the Playtest Session (with the Playtester’s Consent)

有软件包可以让我们捕捉游戏运行时的音频和视频,以及游戏测试员玩游戏时的音频和视频。游戏测试员的视频可以通过笔记本电脑内置的摄像头或其他摄像头录制。在录制音频和视频之前,请务必征得游戏测试员的同意,以免侵犯他们的隐私。如果您有资源,我建议您以这种方式录制游戏测试会话。如果您没有,也不要担心——您可以通过观察和做笔记获得很多有用的信息。

Software packages are available that allow us to capture the audio and video of our game while it is running, along with audio and video of the playtester as they play. The video of the playtester might be recorded through the camera built into a laptop or through another camera. Make sure that you gain the consent of your playtesters before you record them with audio and on video, to avoid invading their privacy. If you have the resources to do it, I recommend recording your playtest sessions this way. If you can’t, don’t worry—you can get a lot of good information by making observations and taking notes.

使用遥测技术捕获游戏测试会话的指标数据

Use Telemetry to Capture Metrics Data about the Playtest Session

我们在游戏中创建代码来捕获有关玩家在游戏中做什么、他们完成每个部分需要多长时间等信息。我们将在第 26 章详细讨论这一点。

We create code in our game that captures information about what the player does in the game, how long it takes them to complete each part of it, and so on. We’ll talk about this in detail in chapter 26.

注意时间:你需要时间进行调查和离职面谈

Keep an Eye on the Time: You Need Time for the Survey and the Exit Interview

我们在第 12 章中讨论了在游戏测试期间要注意时间。现在我们有了这样做的额外理由:在正式的游戏测试中,我们必须在玩家玩完游戏之后但在测试结束之前使用调查并进行离场访谈。

We talked about keeping an eye on the time during a playtest in chapter 12. We now have an extra reason for doing so: in a formal playtest, we have to use a survey and conduct an exit interview after the player is done playing but before the test is over.

测试结束后,在进行任何对话之前,向游戏测试者提供正式的游戏测试调查

After the Test, and before any Conversation, Give the Playtester the Formal Playtest Survey

一旦我们的游戏测试员结束游戏,但在我们开始询问他们的体验之前,我们将给他们一份调查问卷。这份调查问卷将询问他们的体验,但会以可控的方式进行。我们的调查问卷将使用心理学家开发的技术来组织问题,以便我们能够获得尽可能客观的答案。

As soon as our playtester has finished playing, but before we start asking them about their experience, we’re going to give them a survey to fill out. This survey will ask them about their experience, but it will do so in a way that is controlled. Our survey will frame its questions using a technique developed by psychologists, so that we can get answers that are as objective as possible.

调查结束后,使用你准备好的离职面试问题

After the Survey, Use Your Prepared Exit Interview Questions

我们在整个游戏测试过程中都使用了离职面试,在第 12 章中,我给了你 Marc Tattersall 的五个开放式离职面试问题,作为起点。1正式游戏测试时,我们通常会在离职面谈过程中调查一些具体问题。为了获得最佳结果,我们应该提前准备和审查要问的问题,并向每位游戏测试员询问这些问题。

We’ve used exit interviews all the way throughout our playtesting process, and in chapter 12 I gave you Marc Tattersall’s five open-ended exit interview questions to use as a starting point.1 By the time we get to formal playtesting, we usually have some specific issues that we want to investigate in the course of our exit interviews. To get the best results, we should prepare and review the questions that we’ll ask ahead of time and ask them of every playtester.

写下或记录离职面试答案

Either Write Down or Record the Exit Interview Answers

我们的游戏测试员在离职面谈中所说的话往往充满了关于我们游戏设计的智慧和见解,但我们的记忆是会出错的,会受到情绪的影响——你会记得游戏测试员说的一些话,但通常只记得那些让你最高兴或最沮丧的话。为了全面了解人们对我们游戏的细微反应,我们应该记录他们说的每一句话。记下离职面谈的笔记,或录制音频或视频,以便日后查看,或许还可以转录成文字。(转录服务越来越便宜,尤其是自动化服务。)

The things our playtesters say during an exit interview are often filled with wisdom and insight about our game’s design, but our memories are fallible and biased by emotion—you’ll remember some of what your playtesters say but often only the things that delight or depress you the most. To get a full picture of the nuanced ways that people respond to our games, we should capture everything they say. Take notes, or make an audio or video recording of the exit interviews for later review and maybe transcription to text. (Transcription services are increasingly affordable, especially automated services.)

现在我们已经制定了新的指导方针,让我们学习如何制作我们将要使用的工具:正式的游戏测试脚本、正式的游戏测试调查以及离职面试问题。

Now that we’ve laid out our new guidelines, let’s learn how to make the tools we’re going to use: a formal playtest script, a formal playtest survey, and our exit interview questions.

准备正式的游戏测试脚本

Preparing a Formal Playtest Script

正式的游戏测试脚本会明确说明测试人员在游戏测试的每个阶段会说些什么。正式的游戏测试脚本通常如下所示:

The script of a formal playtest specifies exactly what the person running the test will say at each stage of the playtest. A formal playtest script usually runs something like this:

  • 向游戏测试员问好。“您好,欢迎参加我们的游戏测试!感谢您今天加入我们。”
  • Greet the playtester. “Hello, and welcome to our playtest! Thank you for joining us today.”
  • 请他们坐下。“请坐在这里。”
  • Invite them to sit down. “Please sit down here.”
  • 如果你正在使用控制备忘单,请向他们展示。“你可以用这张表作为游戏控制的参考。”
  • Show them the controls cheat sheet if you’re using one. “You can use this sheet as reference for the controls of the game.”
  • 告诉游戏测试员你正在测试游戏,而不是他们的技能。无论他们如何自然地玩游戏都可以。(为此编写自己的脚本,以及下面的所有要点。)
  • Tell the playtester that you’re testing the game, not their skill. However they play naturally will be fine. (Write your own script for this, and all the bullet points below.)
  • 告诉游戏测试员,进行测试的人将无法在游戏测试期间为他们提供任何帮助。
  • Tell the playtester that the person running the test will not be able to give them any help during the playtest.
  • 向游戏测试员提供适当的内容警告,以提醒他们存在他们可能希望避免的任何类型的内容。
  • Give the playtester any content warnings that are appropriate, to alert them to the presence of any type of content that they may wish to avoid.
  • 向游戏测试员提供任何适当的健康警告:例如,与游戏中闪烁的图像或对比明暗图案相关的光敏性癫痫警告,或针对某些类型的虚拟现实游戏的晕动病警告。
  • Give the playtester any health warnings that are appropriate: for example, a photosensitive epilepsy warning related to flashing imagery or contrasting light and dark patterns in your game, or motion sickness warnings for certain types of virtual reality game.
  • 如果要在游戏测试期间拍摄或录音,请向游戏测试员提供关于如何表示同意的说明。
  • Give the playtester instructions about how to give their consent if they are going to be filmed or recorded during the playtest.
  • 告诉他们如何准备玩游戏(例如,戴上耳机并拿起控制器)。
  • Tell them how to get ready to play (for example, putting on headphones and picking up a controller).
  • 告诉他们一切准备就绪后就开始玩。
  • Tell them to start playing, when everything is ready.
  • 脚本应该包括当游戏测试员寻求帮助时该说些什么,礼貌地提醒他们进行游戏测试的人不允许帮助他们。
  • The script should include something about what to say if the playtester asks for help, politely reminding them that the person running the playtest is not allowed to help them.
  • 例外情况是使用书面提示或帮助程序来帮助玩家处理游戏中的已知问题。开发团队应该在游戏测试之前决定何时使用书面提示。协调员可以在游戏测试员到达游戏的某个部分时向他们提供提示,也可以仅在游戏测试员遇到问题时才向他们提供提示,或者仅在游戏测试员请求帮助时才提供提示。哪种方法最合适取决于问题的类型。应该编写脚本的一部分来控制何时使用提示或帮助程序,以及使用时要说些什么。
  • The exception to this is when a written hint or helper is being used to help players deal with a known issue in the game. The development team should decide before the playtest when the written hint will be used. It could be given to every playtester by the coordinator whenever they reach a certain part of the game, it could be given to playtesters only if and when they encounter the problem, or it could be given only when a playtester requests help. Which of these is most appropriate will be dependent on the type of issue. A part of the script should be written that controls when the hint or helper is used, and what to say when it is used.
  • 脚本不应该告诉游戏测试员有关你的游戏的任何信息。
  • The script should not tell the playtester anything else about your game.
  • 当游戏时间结束时,使用脚本要求玩家停止游戏。
  • When the time for playing the game is over, use the script to ask the player to stop playing.
  • 要求游戏测试员填写正式的游戏测试调查。
  • Ask the playtester to fill out the formal playtest survey.
  • 离职面谈通常一开始都是严格按照脚本进行的,但随着面谈的进行,脚本变得越来越少,我们将在下文中讨论。
  • Exit interviews usually start out tightly scripted but become less scripted as they proceed, as we’ll discuss below.
  • 当离职面谈结束后,脚本就不再那么重要了,但要记下你想在游戏测试结束时做的所有事情,比如感谢你的游戏测试员。
  • When the exit interview is over, the script is less important, but make notes in it about everything that you want to do at the end of the playtest, like thanking your playtesters.

编写脚本后,大声朗读以确保其流畅,并进行适当的更改。

Having written your script, read it out loud to make sure that it flows well and make changes as appropriate.

准备正式的游戏测试调查

Preparing a Formal Playtest Survey

在游戏测试结束后,在进行任何讨论之前,我们会立即让游戏测试员填写一份调查问卷。(您有时会听到调查问卷被称为问卷。)我在顽皮狗工作时学会了制作正式游戏测试的调查问卷,使用的是我的朋友 Sam Thompson(索尼互动娱乐的优秀制作人)给我的模板调查问卷。

Immediately after the playtest, and before any discussion, we’ll give our playtester a survey to fill out. (You’ll sometimes hear surveys referred to as questionnaires.) I learned to make surveys for formal playtests while I was at Naughty Dog, using a template survey given to me by my friend Sam Thompson, our excellent producer at Sony Interactive Entertainment.

是 Sam 向我介绍了李克特量表调查的概念,该调查以其发明者美国社会心理学家 Rensis Likert (1903-1981) 的名字命名。李克特量表调查用于测量人们对主观事物的态度和感受,这种方式可以在不同人对每个问题的理解之间建立良好的客观性。李克特量表问题通常用于社会科学,在进行市场营销和客户满意度等商业活动调查,以及其他与态度相关的研究项目中。我们首先通过形成一个积极的陈述来创建单独的李克特量表问题,可能类似于:

It was Sam who introduced me to the idea of the Likert scale survey, named for its inventor, the American social psychologist Rensis Likert (1903–1981). Likert scale surveys are used to measure people’s attitudes and feelings toward something subjective in a way that creates a good degree of objectivity across different people’s understanding of each question. Likert scale questions are commonly used in the social sciences, in conducting surveys for business activities like marketing and customer satisfaction, and in other attitude-related research projects. We create an individual Likert scale question by first forming a positive statement, perhaps something like:

“我喜欢这款游戏的图形质量。”

“I like the QUALITY of the GRAPHICS in this game.”

请注意,这是一个非常直白的陈述。问题中最重要的部分都用大写字母表示,这样读者就能一目了然。很明显,这个问题是在问你对游戏图像质量的看法。它确实依赖于一些专业知识:读者必须了解游戏中的哪一部分被称为“图像”,并且必须有基础来形成对其质量的看法。确保你使用的概念是你所设计并与之一起测试的受众所熟知的。

Notice that this is a very straightforward statement. The most important parts of the question are capitalized, so that they jump out at the reader. It’s pretty clear that this question is asking you what you think about the QUALITY of the game’s GRAPHICS. It does rely on some specialist knowledge: the reader has to understand what part of a game is being referred to as “graphics” and has to have a basis for forming an opinion about their quality. Make sure you use concepts that are well understood by the audience that you’re designing for and playtesting with.

然后向回答问题的人提供一串选项,这些选项通常以这样的方式呈现:

The person answering the question is then presented with a list of choices, which are usually presented in this way:

回答者只需选择最符合他们对该陈述的感受的单词上方的数字。

The person answering simply chooses the number above the words that most align with how they feel about the statement.

在调查一开始,询问每个游戏测试员的姓名(或另一个唯一标识符,如果测试由于某种原因需要匿名),以便您可以将调查结果与您在游戏测试期间收集的有关该玩家体验的其他信息相关联。

At the very beginning of the survey, ask each playtester for their name (or another unique identifier, if the test is to be anonymous for some reason) so that you can correlate the results of the survey with the other information about that player’s experience that you’ll gather during the playtest.

您还可以向玩家索取其他人口统计数据,例如他们的年龄或性别。(如果您确实询问性别,请记住性别是一个范围,而不是二元!)我认为传统的人口统计数据(例如年龄、性别和种族)不如心理统计数据有用,心理统计数据是关于游戏测试员喜欢什么类型的游戏和其他媒体。如果您向玩家询问人口统计和心理统计信息,请在调查结束时询问。这将帮助您避免与游戏测试员的隐性刻板印象相关的偏见。2

You can also request other demographic data from the player, like their age or gender. (If you do ask about gender, remember that gender is a spectrum, not a binary!) I think that traditional demographic data like age, gender, and ethnicity is less useful than psychographic data about what types of games and other media a playtester enjoys. If you ask the player for demographic and psychographic information, ask for it at the end of the survey. This will help you to avoid bias associated with an implicit stereotype on the part of the playtester.2

在顽皮狗,我们通常会在正式游戏测试环节结束时使用这样的调查问卷询问 10 到 30 个问题。李克特量表调查问卷的一大优点是人们通常会快速填写。由于问题的表述方式(以肯定的陈述形式,邀请人们同意或不同意),人们通常一看到问题就知道自己想如何回答。

At Naughty Dog, we would usually use a survey like this to ask between ten and thirty questions at the end of a formal playtest session. One great thing about a Likert scale survey is that people usually fill them out quickly. Because of the way the questions are phrased (as positive statements, which you’ve invited to agree or disagree with) people usually know as soon as they look at the question how they want to answer it.

在创建正式的游戏测试调查时,最好有一个模板作为入门工具包。您可以在接下来的几页中找到一个模板调查,也可以在本书的网站 playfulproductionprocess.com 上找到更多模板。更改问题以适合您的游戏,尽可能保持陈述积极,并将构成每个问题的陈述中的关键字大写并加粗。

When creating a formal playtest survey, it’s good to have a template as a starter kit. You can find a template survey over the next few pages, and you can find more templates on this book’s website, playfulproductionprocess.com. Change the questions to suit your game, keeping the statements positive wherever possible, and capitalizing and bolding the keywords in the statement that forms each question.

您会注意到,模板中的第 4 个问题打破了其他问题所具有的“非常不同意”到“非常同意”的模式。相反,它要求游戏测试者按照“太容易”到“太难”的等级对游戏难度进行评分。如果以其他方式提出某个问题会过于复杂,那么在这样的调查中,有一些打破模式的问题是可以接受的。但是,不要包含太多以这种方式打破模式的问题,否则您可能会创建一份不太客观的调查。

You’ll notice that question 4 in the template breaks the pattern of “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” that the other questions have. Instead, it asks the playtester to rate the difficulty of the game on a scale of “Too easy” to “Too hard.” It’s acceptable in a survey like this to have some questions that break the pattern, if it would be too complicated to ask a certain question otherwise. Don’t include too many questions that break the pattern in this way, though, or you risk creating a less-objective survey.

调查问卷可以打印出来,由游戏测试员用铅笔或钢笔填写,也可以以电子形式提交。如果您在互联网上搜索“在线李克特量表调查”,您会发现许多工具允许您使用计算机或移动设备收集游戏测试员的回答。

The survey can be printed and filled out by the playtesters with a pencil or pen, or it can be given digitally. If you search the Internet for “online Likert scale survey” you’ll find many tools that allow you to gather your playtesters’ responses using a computer or mobile device.

准备离职面谈

Preparing for an Exit Interview

每位游戏测试员填写完调查问卷后,我们会进行离职面谈。作为顽皮狗正式游戏测试流程的一部分,我们会创建一份按优先顺序排列的问题清单,向每位游戏测试员(或者在我们这里是每组游戏测试员——稍后会详细介绍)提出这些问题。

After each playtester has filled out our survey, we’ll conduct an exit interview. As part of the formal playtest process at Naughty Dog, we would create a prioritized list of questions that we would ask every playtester (or in our case, every group of playtesters—more on that in a moment).

离职面试可能是正式游戏测试过程中具有挑战性的一部分。我们从自然语言对话中收到的有关游戏的反馈可能很难解释。我们通常会寻找与我们试图解决的设计问题相关的明确信息,但我们在离职面试中获得的信息可能远非清晰。

The exit interview can be a challenging part of the formal playtesting process. The feedback that we receive about our game from a natural language conversation can be very difficult to interpret. We are usually looking for clear information related to the design problems we’re trying to solve, but the information we receive in an exit interview might be far from clear.

在顽皮狗的正式游戏测试中,我们会同时对 10 个人进行游戏测试。由于当时我们没有足够的资源在游戏测试结束时单独采访每位游戏测试者,所以我们会在一个大组中(有时是两个小组)采访他们。由于小组讨论中涉及社会和心理因素,这样做会给我们收到的反馈带来额外的复杂性。我们经常发现,小组倾向于同意小组中最有魅力、最有力和最直言不讳的成员的意见。这是很自然的,也是社会期望偏差现象的一部分,即人们倾向于给出别人会喜欢的答案。3

In Naughty Dog’s formal playtests, we would test our game on ten people at the same time. Since we didn’t have the resources back then to be able to interview each playtester individually at the end of the playtest, we would interview them in one large group (or sometimes in two smaller groups). Doing this brought additional complexity to the feedback we’d receive, due to the social and psychological factors at play in a group discussion. We often found that the group would tend to agree with the most charismatic, forceful, and outspoken members of the group. That’s natural, and it’s part of a phenomenon known as social desirability bias, whereby people tend to want to give answers that will be viewed favorably by others.3

由于社会期望偏见,最好让团队以外的人来做离职面谈。如果你作为游戏设计师直接与游戏测试员交谈,而他们知道(或怀疑)你创造了他们刚刚玩过的游戏,他们不太可能坦诚地告诉你他们对你的游戏的想法和感受。这就是为什么聘请专业的用户研究人员来进行游戏测试是很好的。

It’s because of social desirability bias that it is best to have someone from outside your team run your exit interviews. If you, the game’s designer, speak directly to the playtesters, and they know (or suspect) that you created the game they just played, they will be less likely to be candid with you regarding their thoughts and feelings about your game. This is why it’s great to bring in a professional user research person to run your playtests.

图 24.1 a–d

Figure 24.1 a–d

只要有可能,最好以一对一或最多四人的小组形式进行离职面试,以便更清楚地了解我们的游戏在每位测试员眼中的表现。出于实际原因,开发团队的一名成员有时必须为自己的游戏进行游戏测试和离职面试。我们应该记住,当测试员直接与员工交谈时,社交期望偏差就会发挥作用。游戏制作者,因此我们应该降低收到的信息的权重。只要我们能够避免这种情况,就应该这样做。例如,我们可以在课堂游戏测试环境中交换游戏,这样我就可以为一款不是我自己的游戏进行游戏测试,而我的一位同学可以为我的游戏进行游戏测试。

Whenever possible, it’s better to conduct exit interviews on a one-on-one basis or in small groups of up to four people, to get a clearer view of how our game landed with each playtester. For practical reasons, a member of the development team will sometimes have to run the playtest and conduct the exit interview for their own game. We should bear in mind that social desirability bias will be in play when a playtester is talking directly to the person who made the game and we should give the information we receive less weight accordingly. Whenever we can avoid that situation, we should. For example, we could trade games in a classroom playtest setting, so that I run a playtest for a game that is not my own, and one of my classmates runs the playtest for my game.

在创建离职面试问题列表时,我们还应该决定如何记录收到的答案。如果我们写字或打字速度足够快,也许我们会在笔记本或移动设备上做笔记。在专业环境中,我们会对收到的口头回复进行音频或视频录制我们会在离职面谈时询问游戏测试员是否能在一个安静的地方进行。当然,如果我们要录制音频或视频,则需要在游戏测试前做一些额外的准备,获取、设置和测试我们的录音设备。再次强调,在录制音频或视频之前,请确保获得游戏测试员的同意。

As we create our list of exit interview questions, we should also decide how we will record the answers we receive. Maybe we will just make notes in a notebook or on a mobile device, if we can write or type quickly enough. In a professional setting, we would make audio or video recordings of the verbal responses that we receive from our playtesters in response to our questions, if we’re able to conduct our exit interview in a quiet place. Of course, if we’re going to record audio or video, that will require some additional preparation before the playtest, to acquire, set up, and test our recording equipment. Again, make sure that you gain the consent of your playtesters before you record them with audio or on video.

设计离职面试问题

Devising Exit Interview Questions

离职面试的复杂性使得我们在面试前做好充分准备,准备好要问的问题至关重要。我在第 12 章中给出的 Marc Tattersall 的五个开放式离职面试问题通常在开发早期最有效,那时我们的游戏设计还在形成中。当我们到达 alpha 里程碑时,我们应该已经非常有信心知道 Marc 问题的答案,而应该问一些关于我们游戏的更尖锐(但仍然是开放式)的问题,试图检查它是否按我们的预期运行,并揭露我们知道并想进一步探索的任何问题,或者我们尚不知道的问题。

The complexities of the exit interview make it essential that we go into the interview well prepared, with good questions to ask. The five open-ended exit interview questions of Marc Tattersall’s that I gave you in chapter 12 usually work best earlier in development, when the design of our game is still being formed. By the time we get to the alpha milestone we should already be feeling quite confident that we know the answers to Marc’s questions, and should instead be asking more pointed (yet still open-ended) questions about our game, seeking to check that it’s working as we expect and to expose any problems that either we know about and want to explore further or that we don’t yet know about.

除了发明李克特量表外,伦西斯·李克特还在 20 世纪 30 年代发明了开放式访谈法和“漏斗技术”,即研究人员从开放式问题开始,逐渐转向更为狭隘的问题。4漏斗技术是一种先进的技术,经验丰富的离职访谈员可以使用它深入了解受访者对游戏的体验细节。

As well as inventing the Likert scale, Rensis Likert developed open-ended interviewing in the 1930s, and the “funneling technique,” whereby a researcher begins with open-ended questions and gradually moves toward more narrowly focused questions.4 Funneling is the kind of advanced technique that an experienced exit interviewer can use to really dig down into the details of how someone experienced a game.

因此,在离职面试前,最好准备好一系列精心准备的开放式问题,这些问题将帮助你广泛而深入地探索游戏体验。请记住,开放式问题是指要求游戏测试员给出广泛答案的问题,而不仅仅是简单的“是”或“否”。我通常会准备一份包含五到十个问题的清单,也许更多,这取决于我们有多少时间进行面试。我的问题集中在我不确定或想了解更多的领域,而后续问题则会更深入地探讨特定领域。我可能会创建条件性问题,只有当我的游戏测试员对前一个问题给出了特定答案时,我才会问这些问题。

So, it’s good to enter an exit interview with a list of thoughtfully prepared open-ended questions that will help you explore the experience of your game in a wide and deep way. Remember, an open-ended question is one that invites an expansive answer from our playtester, not just a simple yes or no. I usually prepare a list of five to ten questions, and maybe many more, depending on how much time we have for the interview. My questions focus on areas I am uncertain about or want to learn more about, and successive questions dive more deeply into particular areas. I might create conditional questions that I would only ask if my playtester gave a particular answer to a previous question.

我的问题尽可能具体和具体——我尽量不问太多模棱两可或模糊的概念。我用一个简短的句子总结每个问题,并注重清晰和简洁。如果我的游戏测试员不能清楚地理解我的问题,我将很难理解他们的答案。每个问题都是一次简短对话的开始:我允许自己在游戏测试员回答时提出后续问题(可能是我当时想到的问题),以引导或引导他们的回答朝着对我有用的方向发展。

I make my questions as specific and as concrete as possible—I try not to ask a question with too many ambiguous or vague concepts. I summarize each question in a single short sentence, and focus on clarity and brevity. It will be hard to interpret the answer that my playtester gives if they don’t clearly understand my question. Each question is the beginning of a short conversation: I give myself permission to ask follow-up questions as the playtester replies (maybe questions that occur to me in the moment), to guide or funnel their responses in a direction that is useful to me.

以下是一些离职面试问题的示例,可帮助您开始编写自己的清单:

Here are some example exit interview questions to get you started in writing your own list:

  • (游戏中的某个特定序列)让你有何感觉?
  • How did (a particular sequence in the game) make you feel?
  • 请描述如何在游戏中(执行某些动作,例如,打开门)。
  • Please describe how to (perform some action, e.g., unlock a door) in the game.
  • 请描述游戏的某些部分(例如经验值系统)的工作原理。
  • Please describe how (some part of the game, e.g., the experience points system) works.
  • 请介绍一下(游戏中的一个角色):他们是谁,你对他们有什么感觉?
  • Tell me about (a character in the game): who are they, and how do you feel about them?
  • 请告诉我游戏中让您感到困惑或迷茫的某个部分。
  • Please tell me about a part of the game where you felt confused or lost.

对于接受测试的游戏设计师来说,游戏测试可能是一种智力和情感上都难以承受的体验。作为一名创意人员,在创作过程的任何阶段都很容易感到迷茫或困惑,这种情况在游戏测试中尤其容易发生,尤其是当游戏结果不如我们所期望或希望时。通过向每位游戏测试人员询问一组常见的问题,我们可以确保在游戏测试结束时获得大量有关我们关心和关注的游戏中内容的信息。

A playtest can be an intellectually and emotionally overwhelming experience for the designer of the game being tested. It’s easy as a creative person to end up feeling lost or confused at any stage in the creative process, and this is especially likely to happen during a playtest, particularly one that isn’t turning out as we’d expected or hoped. By asking each playtester a common set of questions we can be sure that we leave the playtest with a large amount of information about the things in our game that we care about and are focused on.

重点测试游戏的标题、主要艺术和徽标设计

Focus Testing Our Game’s Title, Key Art, and Logo Design

在 alpha 里程碑时开始的正式游戏测试为我们提供了一个重新检查游戏名称、游戏主要艺术和徽标设计的好机会,这些我们可能在整个开发过程中都在进行。我们可以在离职面试期间重点测试这三个方面,使用本书网站 playfulproductionprocess.com 上描述的技术。

The formal playtesting that starts around the time of the alpha milestone creates a good opportunity to check in again on the title of our game, the game’s key art, and our logo design, which we have probably been working on throughout development. We can focus test all three during the exit interview, using the techniques you’ll find described on this book’s website, playfulproductionprocess.com.

为正式游戏测试日做准备

Preparing for the Day of the Formal Playtest

具体如何进行正式的游戏测试取决于您所处的环境:您是专业的游戏开发团队、制作趣味游戏还是在学校学习游戏开发;您是否有测试游戏的地点以及该地点在哪里;您是否需要专门的设备或环境来运行游戏;您需要多少时间来测试您的游戏。

Exactly how you run your formal playtests will depend on the context you’re in: whether you are a professional game development team, making games for fun, or studying game development in school; whether you have a location to test your game, and where that location is; whether you need specialized equipment or circumstances to run your game; how much time you need to test your game.

您需要仔细考虑实际情况,以便为游戏测试日做好充分准备,确保您在正确的时间到达正确的地点,准备好要测试的游戏并找到测试游戏所需的游戏测试员。我建议您在团队中指定一名人员负责正式游戏测试的所有细节,这样就不会遗漏任何细节。

You will need to think through the practical details of your situation in order to properly prepare for the day of the playtest, to make sure that you arrive in the right place at the right time with the game ready to test and the playtesters you need to test it. I recommend that you appoint someone on your team to be responsible for all the details of the formal playtest, so that nothing gets overlooked.

无论谁在进行正式的游戏测试,都需要时刻关注时钟以推动事情的进展,因此请确保在游戏测试时携带一个与游戏测试员使用的计算机或设备分开的钟表,以便您可以定期检查时间。任何观察者都应该记录他们所记录事件发生的时间,所以他们也需要一个钟表。

Whoever is running the formal playtest will need to keep an eye on the clock to move things along, so make sure to go into the playtest with a timepiece that is separate from the computer or device being used by the playtester, so that you can regularly check the time. Anyone observing should record the time when the events they’re noting down take place, so they need a timepiece too.

为了准备游戏测试,请确保您已准备好以下清单中所需的所有内容:

To prepare for the playtest, make sure that you have everything that you need from this checklist:

  •    游戏测试版本良好,无漏洞和重大游戏问题
  •    A healthy build of the game to test, free of bugs and major gameplay problems
  •    运行游戏的计算机或设备,以及所需的任何特殊硬件(例如,游戏控制器或虚拟现实耳机)
  •    A computer or device to run the game on, with any special hardware required (for example, a game controller or virtual reality headset)
  •    控制器和虚拟现实耳机的清洁湿巾
  •    Cleaning wipes for controllers and virtual reality headsets
  •    屏幕足够大,以便游戏测试员和观察者都可以看到
  •    A screen large enough for both playtester and observer to see
  •    游戏测试员的耳机
  •    Headphones for the playtester
  •    游戏测试观察员监听游戏的方法(例如,耳机、立体声音频分配器和延长线)
  •    A method for the playtest observer to listen in on the game (for example, headphones, a stereo audio splitter, and an extension cable)
  •    在游戏测试期间记录观察结果的方法(纸质笔记本和笔,或数码设备)
  •    A method for recording your observations during the playtest (a paper notebook and pen, or a digital device)
  •    如果需要,可以提供一种用于录制屏幕和/或玩家面部和手部的音频和视频的方法
  •    If desired, a method for recording audio and video of the screen and/or the player’s face and hands
  •    游戏测试脚本的纸质或电子版
  •    Paper or digital copies of the playtest script
  •    如果你使用的话,请提供控制备忘单的副本
  •    Copies of the controls cheat sheet, if you’re using one
  •    如果您正在使用书面提示或帮助,以帮助玩家解决任何已知的游戏问题或功能问题(如果您正在使用)
  •    Copies of the written hint or helper to help players with any known gameplay issues or functional issues, if you’re using one
  •    调查的纸质或电子版
  •    Paper or digital copies of the survey
  •    用于纸质调查的钢笔或铅笔
  •    Pens or pencils for paper surveys
  •    离职面试问题的纸质或电子版
  •    Paper or digital copies of the exit interview questions
  •    记录离职面谈答案的方法
  •    A method for recording the exit interview answers
  •    一块钟表
  •    A timepiece

现在我们已经准备好进行游戏测试了。

Now that we have everything we need, we’re ready to run the playtest.

  1. 1. Alissa McAloon,“你应该问游戏测试员 5 个问题以获得有意义的反馈”,Gamasutra,2016 年 10 月 10 日,https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/283044/5_questions_you_should_be_asking_playtesters_to_get_meaningful_feedback.php

  2. 1.  Alissa McAloon, “5 Questions You Should Be Asking Playtesters to Get Meaningful Feedback,” Gamasutra, October 10, 2016, https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/283044/5_questions_you_should_be_asking_playtesters_to_get_meaningful_feedback.php.

  3. 2. “隐性刻板印象”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype

  4. 2.  “Implicit Stereotype,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicit_stereotype.

  5. 3. “社会期望偏见”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias

  6. 3.  “Social-Desirability Bias,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_desirability_bias.

  7. 4 . “伦西斯·李克特”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rensis_Likert

  8. 4.  “Rensis Likert,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rensis_Likert.

 

 

25 进行正式游戏测试

25    Running a Formal Playtest

在非正式环境中进行正式的游戏测试

Formal Playtesting in an Informal Environment

在理想情况下,我们会在专门的可用性套件中运行每个正式的游戏测试,该套件具有专为自然游戏会话而设计的环境、玩家和其屏幕的音频视频源,并且游戏会将指标数据发送到中央服务器。

In an ideal world, we would run every formal playtest in a specialized usability suite, with an environment designed for naturalistic play sessions, audio-video feeds of the player and their screen, and with the game sending metrics data to a central server.

但是,只需一个会议室或教室,并在同一时间在同一空间测试许多不同的游戏,我们就可以按照我在第 12 章“游戏测试”、第 24 章“准备正式游戏测试”和本章中列出的指导方针,在最非正式、最拥挤、最嘈杂的环境中捕捉到正式游戏测试的精神。

But with just a meeting room or a classroom, and with many different games being tested in the same space at the same time, we can capture the spirit of a formal playtest in even the most informal, crowded, noisy environment, using the guidelines that I lay out in chapter 12, “Playtesting,” chapter 24, “Preparing for a Formal Playtest,” and in this chapter.

通过谨慎对待与游戏测试员的互动,并确保我们不会意外地向他们透露我所说的游戏“特权”知识(特殊的提前或幕后信息),我们可以在他们周围创造一个“客观泡沫”。然后,我们可以从游戏测试员那里获得大量关于我们游戏的清晰、高质量的反馈,就像我们在科学控制的可用性测试环境中一样。

By being careful about how we engage with our playtesters and by making sure that we don’t accidentally give them what I call “privileged” knowledge of the game (special ahead-of-time or behind-the-scenes information), we can create a “bubble of objectivity” around them. We can then get a lot of clear, high-quality feedback about our game from our playtesters, just as we would in a scientifically controlled usability testing environment.

寻找游戏测试员

Finding Playtesters

寻找“Kleenex”游戏测试员进行正式的游戏测试可能很困难,即使在游戏工作室或游戏项目中,那里充满了渴望玩游戏并帮助设计师的人。您的团队寻找游戏测试员的正确方法取决于您的情况。如果您是一家专业公司或一个有预算的学术研究项目,并且您有资源能够支付游戏测试员的工资,那么就这样做吧——我相信人们应该为他们的劳动得到报酬,即使这种劳动是令人愉快的。如果您的预算很少,实物支付可能会有效——也许是游戏发布时的一份副本,或者游戏测试当天的食物。

Finding “Kleenex” playtesters for a formal playtest can be challenging, even at a game studio or in a game program full of people eager to play games and help their designers. The right way for your team to find playtesters will depend on your circumstances. If you are a professional company or an academic research project with a budget, and you have the resources to be able to pay your playtesters, then do—I believe that people should be compensated for their labor, even if that labor is enjoyable. If you have very little budget, payment in kind might work—perhaps a copy of the game when it is released, or food on the day of the playtest.

在游戏项目中,有一种观点认为,在正式的游戏测试中担任游戏测试员对新晋设计师来说是一个很好的学习经历。每个游戏设计师都需要培养他们的“大声思考”技能,这是他们专业实践的基本组成部分,以及在游戏中陷入困境并拥有游戏的设计师拒绝帮助你,当你轮到你当设计师的时候,可能会成为一个宝贵的回忆。

In a game program, there’s an argument to be made that being a playtester in a formal playtest is a good learning experience for an upcoming designer. Every game designer needs to cultivate their thinking-out-loud skills as a basic part of their professional practice, and the experience of being stuck in a game and having the game’s designer refuse to help you can be a valuable memory when it’s your turn to be the designer.

我使用过许多方法将 Kleenex 游戏测试员带到我的课堂上进行正式的游戏测试。我使用海报和邮件列表公告邀请我们大学社区的人员,并要求将要测试游戏的学生各自邀请一两个朋友。当我要求他们使用在线表格报名参加游戏测试时,人们似乎更愿意参加,并且在游戏测试之前或之后提供零食可以帮助确保人们参加。当学生带朋友来时,我会尽量避免让他们测试他们朋友制作的游戏。这可能会带来一些失望,但我认为否则就会存在太多的社会期望偏见。

I’ve used many methods to bring Kleenex playtesters into my classes for formal playtests. I’ve used posters and mailing list announcements to invite people from our university’s community, and I’ve asked the students whose games will be tested to each invite a friend or two. People seem more committed to coming along when I ask them to sign up for the playtest using an online form, and providing snacks before or after a playtest can help guarantee that people show up. When students bring a friend, I try to avoid having them playtest the game that their friend made. This can lead to some disappointment, but I think there’s too much social desirability bias present otherwise.

请记住,如果您的任何游戏测试者未达到特定年龄(取决于您所在地区的法律),您将需要他们的父母或监护人签署同意书。请确保您正确研究了您所在地区与此相关的法律要求,并在游戏测试之前做好这件事。

Remember that if any of your playtesters are below a certain age (depending on the law in your area) you will need their parent or guardian to sign a consent form. Make sure that you properly research the legal requirements for your area related to this, and do it well in advance of the playtest.

寻找地点、安排时间并确定游戏测试协调员

Finding a Location, Arranging a Time, and Deciding a Playtest Coordinator

找到一个适合团队情况的游戏测试地点。如果您是专业团队,也许您可​​以使用会议室或工作区的公共区域。如果您是学生团队,您应该能够找到教室或公共休息室来使用。如果您是游戏制作俱乐部或集体的成员,也许您的共享空间是可用的。联合办公空间提供会议室出租。要测试大多数类型的数字游戏,您需要一个有桌子或书桌和椅子的地点。确保您有足够的椅子供游戏测试员和进行游戏测试的人使用,并检查该地点是否有饮用水和卫生间。

Find a location for your playtest that is appropriate for your team’s circumstances. If you are a professional team, perhaps you can use a meeting room or a communal area at your workspace. If you are a student team, you should be able to find a classroom or common room to use. If you are a member of a game-making club or collective, maybe your shared space is available. Coworking spaces offer meeting rooms for rent. To playtest most types of digital game, you will need a location that has tables or desks and chairs. Make sure you have enough chairs for both the playtesters and the people running the playtest, and check that the location has access to drinking water and restrooms.

在场地预留足够的时间;您需要多少时间取决于游戏的长度、您想要测试的时间、可用的站点数量(请参阅下面的“准备场地”)以及您将拥有的游戏测试人员数量。正式游戏测试的目标是让至少七名、最好是十名游戏测试人员玩完整个游戏,并给他们足够的时间玩完整个游戏(或几乎全部)。

Block out enough time at the location; how much time you need will be dependent on the length of your game, the amount of time you want to test it for, the number of stations you will have available (see “Preparing the Location” below), and the number of playtesters you’ll have. The goal for a formal playtest is to get at least seven and preferably ten playtesters to play through the game, and to give them enough time that they can play the whole game (or nearly all of it).

决定谁来监督游戏测试,以确保游戏测试正常运行并与游戏测试员交谈。我们称此人为游戏测试协调员。协调员最好不是开发团队成员。否则,团队成员可以担任此角色。对于大型游戏测试,可能需要几位协调员分担管理地点和设施、与游戏测试员交谈、观察测试情况以及在必要时进行干预的职责。

Decide who is going to supervise the playtest, to make sure that it runs properly and to talk to the playtesters. We’ll call this person the playtest coordinator. It’s best if the coordinator can be someone other than a development team member. Otherwise, a member of the team can take on this role. For large playtests, several coordinators may be needed to share the duties of managing the location and facilities, talking to the playtesters, making observations about the test, and intervening when necessary.

大多数正式的游戏测试分为七个阶段进行:

Most formal playtests take place in seven stages:

  1. 准备场地
  2. Preparing the location
  3. 游戏测试员的到来
  4. The arrival of the playtesters
  5. 游戏测试开始前
  6. Immediately before the playtest starts
  7. 游戏环节
  8. The play session
  9. 汇报会
  10. The debrief session
  11. 游戏测试后清理
  12. Clearing up after the playtest
  13. 分析游戏测试结果
  14. Analyzing the playtest results

准备场地

Preparing the Location

安排好时间、地点和游戏测试员后,请务必提前到达该地点,以便开始游戏测试。使用第 24 章末尾“为正式游戏测试日做准备”下的清单,并带上您准备的所有东西。

Having arranged a time, place, and playtesters, make sure you arrive at the location early to get the playtest set up. Use the checklist under “Preparing for the Day of the Formal Playtest” at the end of chapter 24 and take everything that you prepared.

运行待测试游戏软件副本的每台硬件称为一个工作站(有时也称为座位)。根据您的情况和资源,您可能只有一个或多个工作站。例如,如果您的游戏是单人游戏或在线多人游戏,并且您有五个工作站,您可以同时与五名游戏测试员一起测试。如果您的游戏是双人本地多人游戏,则五个工作站需要十名游戏测试员。

Each individual piece of hardware running a software copy of the game that will be tested is known as a station (sometimes also known as a seat). You might have just one station or many, depending on your situation and resources. For example, if your game is a single-player game or an online multiplayer game, and you have five stations, you can test with five playtesters at the same time. If your game is a two-player local multiplayer game, you will need ten playtesters for five stations.

如果您同时在多个工作站上测试同一款游戏,请在工作站之间设置隔板,以便游戏测试员看不到相邻工作站的屏幕。您可以使用纸板箱或泡沫板轻松廉价地制作隔板。

If you are testing the same game on many stations at the same time, set up dividers between the stations so that playtesters cannot see the screens of their neighbors. You can create dividers cheaply and easily from cardboard boxes or sheets of foamcore board.

设置游戏测试站并检查所有准备工作。这将需要一些时间,因此请在游戏测试员到达之前开始设置。

Set up your playtest station or stations and check all your preparations. This will take some time, so start setting up well before the playtesters are due to arrive.

  • 安装您计划测试的游戏的稳定、健康版本。如果后期进行了更改,还请安装之前已检查过重大问题的安全版本。
  • Install the stable, healthy version of the game that you plan to test. If late changes were made, also install the safety build that was previously checked for major issues.
  • 检查屏幕和扬声器是否正常工作。
  • Check that the screen and speakers are working well.
  • 检查任何特殊硬件(例如,游戏控制器或虚拟现实耳机)是否正常工作。
  • Check that any special hardware (for example, a game controller or virtual reality headset) is working correctly.
  • 检查游戏是否正常运行,如果发现问题,请使用安全版本或采取其他适当步骤。
  • Check to see that the game is running with no problems and use the safety build or take other appropriate steps if issues are discovered.
  • 在第 26 章中,我们将讨论游戏收集的有关玩家在游戏中的行为的指标数据。如果您正在使用游戏指标系统,请检查它是否正常工作。
  • In chapter 26, we’ll talk about the metrics data that the game will gather about the player’s actions in the game. If you are using a game metrics system, check to see that it is working correctly.
  • 如果您使用站点分隔板,请检查以确保每个站点都无法看到相邻的屏幕。
  • If you’re using station dividers, check that neighboring screens cannot be seen from each station.
  • 检查您在观看时收听游戏测试所使用的方法。
  • Check the method that you’ll use to listen in on the playtest as you watch.
  • 确保您的笔记记录方法方便且有效(您的数字设备已充电并已打开,或者您的纸质笔记本有一些空白页并且您的笔没有用完墨水!)。
  • Make sure that your note-taking method is handy and working (that your digital device is charged and turned on, or that your paper notebook has some blank pages and your pen hasn’t run out of ink!).
  • 确保所有音频和视频录制设备或软件均已充电并正常工作。
  • Make sure that any audio and video recording equipment or software is charged and working correctly.
  • 检查调查问卷是否已准备好发放,如果使用纸质调查问卷,请准备好钢笔或铅笔。
  • Check that the survey is ready to be given out, along with pens or pencils if you’re using paper surveys.
  • 检查离职面试问题是否就在手边。
  • Check that the exit interview questions are at hand.
  • 将控制备忘单(参见第 12 章)放在每个游戏测试员座位前面的桌子上。
  • Place the controls cheat sheet (see chapter 12) on the table in front of where each playtester will sit.
  • 如果您打算使用书面提示或帮助来应对游戏中的已知问题(请参阅第 12 章),请将其放在看不见的地方,前提是每个游戏测试员只能在特定时间看到它。否则,请将其放在每个游戏测试员坐的位置前面的桌子上。
  • If you’re planning to use a written hint or helper because of a known issue in the game (see chapter 12), put it somewhere out of sight if each playtester should only see it at a certain time. Otherwise, put it on the table in front of where each playtester will sit.
  • 检查您的钟表是否显示正确的时间并且在整个游戏测试过程中是否易于查看。
  • Check that your timepiece is showing the right time and is easy to see throughout the playtest.

游戏测试员的到来

The Arrival of the Playtesters

当游戏测试员到达时,协调员应使​​用预测试脚本来迎接他们并感谢他们的到来。为他们提供一个舒适的等候场所,并提供饮用水和洗手间。如果您要使用预测试调查,这是一个让游戏测试员填写的好时机。

As the playtesters arrive, a coordinator should use the pretest script to greet them and thank them for coming. Give them a comfortable place to wait with access to drinking water and restrooms. If you are going to use a pretest survey, this is a good time to give it to the playtesters to fill out.

使用预测试脚本向游戏测试员提供对游戏测试成功至关重要的任何信息(内容警告、健康警告、同意录制视频的说明等)。根据我们的游戏测试指南,尽量减少与游戏测试员的互动,但要保持礼貌,如果您需要脱离脚本,请在说话前先思考一下,避免透露会引起偏见的信息。

Use the pretest script to give your playtesters any information that is important to the success of the playtest (content warnings, health warnings, instructions about consenting to video recording, and so on). Minimize your interaction with the playtesters beyond what the script dictates, per our playtest guidelines, but be polite, and if you need to go off-script, think for a moment before you speak to avoid giving out information that will introduce bias.

游戏测试开始前

Immediately before the Playtest Starts

协调员应引导每位游戏测试员到达他们将要玩游戏的站点并让他们安顿下来。仍然按照脚本,为他们提供准备玩游戏所需的任何帮助。如果您使用控件备忘单,请向每位游戏测试员展示。如果合适,请让他们大声思考。不要告诉游戏测试员有关他们将要玩的游戏的任何不在脚本中的内容。

The coordinator should guide each playtester to the station they’ll be playing at and get them settled in. Still following the script, give them any help they need to get ready to play. Show each playtester the controls cheat sheet, if you are using one. Ask them to think out loud, if appropriate. Don’t tell the playtester anything at all about the game they are going to play that isn’t in the script.

尽量避免让任何一位游戏测试员在自己的位置等待的时间比其他人更长。我们希望每位游戏测试员对我们的游戏都有相同的印象,包括他们花在查看标题屏幕上的时间。一旦游戏测试员和协调员都准备好了,协调员就会要求游戏测试员开始游戏,然后游戏测试就开始了。

Try to avoid having any of the playtesters wait at their station for longer than the others. We want each playtester to gain the same impression of our game, including how long they spend looking at the title screen. As soon as both the playtesters and the coordinator are ready, the coordinator asks the playtesters to start playing, and the playtest begins.

游戏环节

The Play Session

正式游戏测试的第一部分称为游戏环节。这是游戏测试员玩游戏的部分。协调员(以及观察游戏测试的其他人)应记下游戏环节开始的时间。

The first part of the formal playtest is known as the play session. This is the part where playtesters play the game. The coordinator—and anyone else observing the playtest—should make a note of the time that the play session begins.

在游戏过程中,每个游戏测试员都应自由发挥,以自己的方式玩游戏。根据我们的游戏测试指南,协调员和其他观察员应观察 (a) 每个游戏测试员在游戏中的行为,以及 (b) 他们所说的话,包括他们的想法和感受。即使游戏测试通过音频和视频进行录制,观察员仍应通过做笔记来获取尽可能多的信息。

For the duration of the play session, each playtester should be left to their own devices and allowed to play the game in their own way. According to our playtest guidelines, the coordinator and any other observers should observe (a) what each playtester does in the game, and (b) anything they say about what they’re thinking and feeling. Even if the playtest is being recorded with audio and video, the observers should still capture as much information as they can by taking notes.

如果我使用纸质笔记本,我会在空白处画上星星和圆圈来创建“行动项目”并注释问题以供进一步讨论。如果我在电子表格或文档中输入内容,我会使用粗体和斜体来做同样的事情。游戏测试记录软件套件通常允许开发人员用注释标记视频的各个部分,从而非常快速轻松地创建问题日志。在正式的游戏测试中,我会像机器人一样记录我看到的一切。我试图做到这一点,以便当我稍后查看我的笔记时,我们游戏存在的问题会立即跳出来。

If I’m using a paper notebook, I draw stars and circles in the margins to create “action items” and to annotate issues for further discussion. If I’m typing into a spreadsheet or document, I’ll use bold and italics to do the same. Playtest-recording software suites usually allow developers to tag sections of video with notes, creating a log of issues very quickly and easily. During a formal playtest, I become almost robotic in noting everything I see. I’m trying to make it so that when I review my notes later the problems that our game has will immediately jump out at me.

即使游戏测试员请求帮助,协调员也不应该帮助游戏测试员。如果游戏测试员确实请求帮助,协调员应该道歉,并按照脚本提醒他们不允许提供任何帮助。如果合适,请按照脚本使用您准备的书面提示或帮助。

The coordinator should not help the playtester at all, even if the playtester asks for help. If the playtester does ask for help, the coordinator should apologize, and, following the script, remind them that they are not allowed to give any help. If appropriate, follow the script to use the written hint or helper you prepared.

协调员应注意时间。最后必须留出足够的时间进行游戏测试的第二部分,即汇报环节,使用调查和退出访谈问题。这可能意味着在游戏测试员看到游戏中的所有内容之前结束游戏环节,如果有必要,协调员有责任这样做。

The coordinator should keep an eye on the time. There must be enough time left at the end for the second part of the playtest, the debrief session, using the survey and the exit interview questions. This might mean ending the play session before the playtester has seen everything in the game, and it’s the responsibility of the coordinator to do this if necessary.

有时在游戏过程中会出现困难。硬件可能会出现故障,或者游戏测试员可能会做出破坏性行为。你为游戏测试准备得越充分,事情就会进行得越顺利,但如果出现问题,也不要感到压力。正式游戏测试所需的精神与戏剧制作所需的精神非常相似:当出现问题时,你只需顺其自然,尽最大努力挽救局面。无论以何种方式,你总是能够从糟糕的局面中取得最好的结果,事实上,这是一种在整个游戏开发过程中都应该保持的良好态度。

Sometimes difficulties arise during the play session. The hardware might malfunction, or a playtester might behave in a disruptive way. The better you prepare for the playtest, the more smoothly things will run, but don’t get stressed out if things go wrong. The spirit required for a formal playtest is a lot like that needed for a theater production: when things go wrong you just have to roll with it and do your best to rescue the situation. You can always make the best of a bad lot, one way or another, and in fact this is a good attitude to keep for the whole process of game development.

汇报会

The Debrief Session

游戏测试环节结束后,就到了汇报环节,每个游戏测试员都要填写调查问卷,并参加离职面谈。

After the playtest session, it’s time for the debrief session, when each playtester fills out the survey and takes part in the exit interview.

仍然按照脚本进行,在游戏会话结束时立即向每位游戏测试者提供调查问卷,并让他们立即填写。在他们完成调查问卷之前,不要与游戏测试者交谈,除了礼貌地要求他们完成调查问卷。目标是捕捉游戏测试者对游戏的直接、原始印象。我们希望他们以玩游戏时的心态来完成调查问卷,直接了解他们对游戏的想法和感受。

Still following the script, give each playtester the survey the moment the play session ends and have them fill it out right away. Don’t talk to the playtester before they complete the survey, beyond politely asking them to complete it. The goal is to capture the playtester’s immediate, raw impressions of the game. We want them to use the same mindset to complete the survey that they were using to play the game, with direct access to their thoughts and feelings about it.

如果你在游戏测试期间重点测试游戏标题、关键艺术、徽标设计或其他任何内容,请在游戏测试员完成调查后、之前立即进行离职面谈。您可能需要与游戏测试员交谈才能成功完成焦点测试,但同样,请尽量减少与他们的对话:您正在尝试获取他们的意见,并且不想通过介绍自己的意见而使他们产生偏见,即使是无意的。

If you’re focus testing your game title, key art, logo design, or anything else during the playtest, do it immediately after the playtester completes the survey but before the exit interview. You may need to talk to the playtester to successfully complete the focus test, but again, minimize your conversation with them: you are trying to get their opinions, and don’t want to bias them by introducing your own, even accidentally.

然后就到了进行离职面谈的时间。离职面谈是一对一进行(这是首选方式),还是集体进行(有时更实际),将取决于您团队的情况和资源。有时,游戏测试员或游戏测试员小组会被带到另一个安静的地方进行离职面谈,那里已经设置了录音设备。

Then it’s time to conduct the exit interview. Whether the exit interview is conducted one-on-one, as is preferable, or in a group, which is sometimes more practical, will be dependent on your team’s circumstances and resources. Sometimes a playtester or group of playtesters will be taken to a different location for the exit interview, where it is quiet and recording equipment has been set up.

向游戏测试员询问您准备好的开放式问题,听取他们的意见,并记下他们的答案或录音。如果您有一系列旨在引导玩家关注您感兴趣的话题的问题,请使用它们。如果游戏测试员开始谈论一些有趣但出乎意料的事情,请向他们提出后续问题以进一步引导对话。如果您的游戏测试员不愿意回答,请尝试用同一个问题的不同措辞来引出他们,或者转到下一个问题。并不是每个人都能轻松参与离职面谈,所以不要强迫一个没什么可说的游戏测试员。

Ask your playtesters the open-ended questions you’ve prepared, listen to what they have to say, and write down their answers or record them. If you have sequences of questions designed to funnel your players toward the topics you’re interested in, use them. If playtesters begin to talk about something interesting but unexpected, ask them follow-up questions to further guide the conversation. If your playtesters are not forthcoming, try to draw them out with different phrasings of the same question or move on to the next question. Not everyone finds it easy to participate in an exit interview, so don’t push a playtester who doesn’t have much to say.

最终,离职面谈将完成,否则您将在该地点的时间不够。后者更常见——我们关于游戏的有趣对话可以无限期地进行!现在是时候感谢每位游戏测试员,并告诉他们他们在帮助我们改进游戏设计方面有多大帮助。给他们任何你决定赠送的礼物,或者如果这是协议的一部分,就给他们报酬。如果他们得到报酬,在你把他们送回这个世界之前,可能需要填写一些文件。

Eventually, the exit interview will be completed or you will run out of time at the location. The latter is more common—the interesting conversations we have about our games can run on indefinitely! It’s time to thank each playtester and tell them how helpful they have been in helping us improve the design of our game. Give them any gifts you’ve decided to give or pay them if that was part of the agreement. If they are being paid, there may be some paperwork to fill out before you send them back out into the world.

游戏测试后清理

Clearing Up after the Playtest

测试人员离开后,需要做一些工作来整理测试地点。务必收集调查问卷并将其放在安全的地方。每个做笔记的人都应确保他们的笔记放在安全的地方,并且您应妥善保管其他重要文件,例如已完成的家长同意书。如果您使用游戏指标系统(请参阅第 26 章),请确保在测试后立即收集并备份指标数据。测试在时间、金钱和精力方面都很昂贵,因此不要丢失结果。

After the playtesters have left, there will be some work to do to tidy up the playtest location. Be sure to collect up the surveys and put them in a safe place. Everyone who took notes should make sure their notes are somewhere safe, and you should secure any other important documents, like completed parental consent forms. If you are using a game metrics system (see chapter 26), make sure the metrics data is gathered together and backed up immediately after the playtest. Playtests are expensive in terms of time, money, and effort, so don’t lose the results.

如果开发团队参加了游戏测试,那么最好花几分钟时间放松一下,分享一下对测试的想法和感受。游戏测试结束后,房间里的气氛往往有点兴奋,就像演出落幕后的后台一样。团队可能会筋疲力尽,为测试结束而松一口气,但又为自己的成就感到高兴。如果事情进展顺利,有些人可能会兴高采烈。如果收到任何特别难听的反馈,有些人可能会感到沮丧。通过相互交谈,即使只有几分钟,我们也可以开始回到现实。这是一个提醒彼此感觉不好是正常的,但我们不应该气馁的机会——接受难听的反馈是我们学习改进游戏所需知识的方式。

If the development team was present for the playtest, it’s good to take a few minutes to decompress while clearing up, by sharing thoughts and feelings about the test. The mood in the room immediately after a playtest is often a little giddy, just like backstage after the curtain falls at a show. The team might be exhausted, relieved that it’s over but happy in their accomplishment. Some might be elated if things went well. Some might be feeling down if they received any particularly difficult feedback. By talking with one another, even for just a few minutes, we can start to come back down to earth. It’s a chance to remind each other that it’s okay to feel bad, but that we shouldn’t be discouraged—receiving difficult feedback is how we learn what we need to know to make our game better.

分析游戏测试结果

Analyzing the Playtest Results

正式的游戏测试为我们提供了丰富的数据供分析——多到让人不知从何下手。现在我们有:

A formal playtest gives us a wealth of data to analyze—so much so that it can be hard to know where to start. We now have:

  • 已完成的调查
  • Completed surveys
  • 游戏会话观察笔记(可能还有视频)
  • Play session observation notes (and possibly videos)
  • 离职面谈记录
  • Exit interview notes
  • 焦点测试结果
  • Focus test results
  • 指标数据(如果我们收集了)
  • Metrics data, if we collected any

分析正式游戏测试调查的结果

Analyzing the Results of a Formal Playtest Survey

在正式游戏测试之后,当我开始评估其结果时,我做的第一件事就是查看我从调查中获得的数据。我们的游戏测试员给出的答案代表了他们对游戏的想法和感受的大量信息。我们如何快速有效地解析这些数据,以迅速了解我们的游戏如何吸引人们?如果我们使用电子表格,这实际上非常简单。

The very first thing that I do after a formal playtest, when beginning to evaluate its results, is to look at the data I’ve received from the surveys. The answers that our playtesters have given represent a lot of information about the thoughts and feelings they have about our game. How can we parse that data in a quick and effective way, to rapidly build up a picture of how our game is landing with people? It’s actually very easy, if we use a spreadsheet.

我从图 25.1中的模板开始,您可以在本书的网站 playfulproductionprocess.com 上找到该模板。此模板有空间用于存放来自 10 位游戏测试员的调查数据,并显示了我们在第 24 章中使用的相同示例问题。您会看到此模板有一列年龄 - 您可以添加列来存放从游戏测试员那里收集的任何人口统计或心理统计信息。

I begin with the template in figure 25.1, which you can find on this book’s website, playfulproductionprocess.com. This template has space for the survey data from ten playtesters and shows the same sample questions we used in chapter 24. You’ll see that this template has a column for age—you could add columns for any demographic or psychographic information that you gathered from your playtesters.

图 25.1

Figure 25.1

无论调查问卷是纸质填写还是在线填写,将已完成调查问卷中的信息传输到电子表格中都是一项快速简便的数据输入工作,只需将游戏测试员选择的数字插入到与每个游戏测试员的行和每个问题的列相对应的单元格中即可。即使缓慢而谨慎地进行,这通常也只需要十分钟左右。当然,可以编写工具来自动执行此过程,您可以在线找到付费调查工具,这将为您节省一些时间。

Whether the survey was filled out on paper or with an online form, it’s a quick and easy data entry job to transfer the information from the completed surveys to this spreadsheet, plugging in the numbers that the playtesters selected in the cell corresponding to the row for each playtester and the column for each question. Even going slowly and carefully, this usually only takes ten minutes or so. Of course, tools can be written to automate this process, and you can find paid survey tools online that will save you some time.

您可以在图 25.2中看到一个正式的游戏测试数据电子表格,其中包含一些示例数据。

You can see a formal playtest data spreadsheet with some example data plugged in in figure 25.2.

图 25.2

Figure 25.2

标有“组平均值”和“组中位数”的行中的公式根据测试中所有游戏测试员的答案计算每个问题的平均值和中位数。平均值或中位数就是所有玩家答案的总和除以玩家人数。中位数是所有玩家答案中上半部分与下半部分之间的数字:有时它比平均值更能让我们了解“中间”答案是什么。将所有数据输入电子表格后,只需查看“组平均值”和“组中位数”行,我们就可以很好地了解游戏测试员作为一个群体对我们游戏的看法。当然,对于大多数问题,数字越高,玩家就越喜欢游戏的这个方面。

The formulae in the rows labeled GROUP AVERAGE and GROUP MEDIAN calculate the average (mean) and median values for each question, derived from the answers of all the playtesters in the test. The average value or mean value is simply the total of all the players’ answers, divided by the number of players. The median value is the number that separates the higher half of all the player’s answers from the lower half: it sometimes gives us a better sense of what the “middle” answer is than the average does. When all the data has been entered into the spreadsheet, we can get a good sense of what the playtesters thought of our game as a group, just by looking at the GROUP AVERAGE and GROUP MEDIAN rows. Of course, for most of the questions, the higher the number, the more the players liked that aspect of the game.

通过持续的游戏测试和同心开发精心设计的游戏在第一次游戏测试中通常每个问题的得分在 3 到 5 分之间。如果没有,那么主要问题可能在开发过程中一直没有被注意到或解决。如果游戏在某个问题上得分很低,那么设计师就必须问自己:我们这里真的有问题吗?这是异常现象吗?这是故意为之吗?

Games that have been carefully designed using ongoing playtesting and concentric development usually score somewhere in the range of three to five for each question at the first playtest. If they don’t, major problems may have gone unnoticed or unaddressed in the course of development up until that point. If a game scores low on a particular question, then the designers have to ask themselves: Do we have a real problem here? Was this an anomaly? Was this by design?

我可以想象一款游戏(可能是艺术游戏或“严肃”游戏)被故意设计成引起游戏测试者的负面反应。如果低分符合设计师的意图,那么我们可以放心地忽略甚至欢迎低分。我们正在寻找的是惊喜:既有好的惊喜——我们原以为他们不会喜欢我们奇怪的主要机制,也不会理解我们的故事,但他们确实喜欢!——也有坏的惊喜——我们认为我们的艺术或声音设计非常出色,但我们的游戏测试者认为它只是一般水平。

I can imagine a game (probably an art game or a “serious” game) that has deliberately been designed to elicit a negative reaction from playtesters. If a low score is aligned with the designers’ intent, then we can safely ignore—or even welcome—the low score. What we’re looking for is surprises: both good surprises—we didn’t think they’d like our strange main mechanic, or understand our story, but they did!—and bad surprises—we thought our art or sound design was brilliant, but our playtesters think it’s only average.

正式的游戏测试最好以一系列测试的形式进行,这些测试持续数周或数月,在数据电子表格中,有标记为上次测试的平均值和上次测试的中位数的行,您可以将上次游戏测试中得到的组平均值和组中位数的结果复制到这些行中。在标记为上次测试的平均值差值和上次测试的中位数差值的行中,有公式可以从当前分数中减去之前的分数。您可以在电子表格中应用条件格式,并使用颜色突出显示某个问题的数字是上升、下降还是保持不变。

Formal playtests work best when they happen as a series of tests taking place across weeks or months, and in the data spreadsheet there are rows labeled AVERAGE FROM LAST TEST and MEDIAN FROM LAST TEST where you can copy over the results that you got for GROUP AVERAGE and GROUP MEDIAN in your previous playtest. In the rows labeled AVERAGE DELTA FROM LAST TEST and MEDIAN DELTA FROM LAST TEST, there are formulae that subtract your previous scores from your current scores. You can apply conditional formatting in the spreadsheet and use color to highlight when your numbers for a particular question have gone up, gone down, or stayed the same.

当然,我们通常希望分数随着时间的推移而上升。在开发《神秘海域》游戏的过程中,随着游戏的完成和完善,我们会看到游戏玩法、图形和音频设计等方面的分数逐渐发生细微变化。即使我们游戏玩法的平均分数只从 4.3 上升到 4.4,我们也可以确信,我们最近所做的改变对游戏体验产生了积极影响,而不是损害了它。在游戏设计这个主观的艺术创作过程中,这种持续不断的正式游戏测试可以让人非常放心。

Of course, we usually want our numbers to go up over time. Working on the Uncharted games, from playtest to playtest we would see small, gradual changes in the scores we received for things like our gameplay, graphics, and audio design, as we completed and polished the game. Even if the average score we received for our gameplay only went up from 4.3 to 4.4, we could be confident that the recent changes we’d made had contributed positively to the experience of the game, rather than harming it. This kind of ongoing and incremental formal playtesting can be very reassuring, amid the subjective artmaking process that is game design.

分析游戏过程观察笔记和视频

Analyzing Play Session Observation Notes and Videos

在第 12 章中,我给了你很多关于分析我们从观看游戏测试和离职面谈中获得的反馈的建议。所有这些建议仍然适用于正式的游戏测试。特别是,考虑离职面谈的反馈是否可以归类为 (1) 必须修复、(2) 可能需要修复或 (3) 一个新想法,并据此列出清单。当我们进行正式的游戏测试时,我们处于探索阶段的程度较低,而是专注于构建我们的游戏,因此要小心不要追逐太多新想法。这并不是说还没有发现可以以好的方式改变你的游戏的东西,但要把主要精力放在寻找和解决问题上。

In chapter 12, I gave you quite a lot of advice about analyzing the feedback that we get from watching a playtest and from an exit interview. All of that advice is still applicable to a formal playtest. In particular, consider whether the feedback from the exit interview can be categorized as (1) must fix, (2) maybe fix, or (3) a new idea, and make lists accordingly. By the time we’re running formal playtests we are in less of an exploratory phase and are focused on building out our game, so be wary of chasing too many new ideas. That’s not to say that there aren’t still discoveries to be made that could transform your game in a good way, but keep your main focus on finding and fixing problems.

我相信,对于许多类型的游戏来说,仅仅观看某人的比赛就能告诉我们几乎所有需要知道的关于如何改进它的信息。通常很容易辨别玩家在游戏中的行为、肢体语言,有时甚至是面部表情,都可能反映出玩家心理状态的复杂信息。你可以从玩家在游戏中的行为判断他们是否了解自己能做什么以及应该做什么。你可以看到他们是否以新的方式将游戏教给他们的概念整合在一起,并让他们觉得有趣。你通常可以从玩家的坐姿和发出的感叹中判断出他们是感兴趣、无聊还是沮丧。我们的游戏观察笔记和我们制作的任何其他录音都包含这些信息。

I believe that, for many types of game, just watching someone play can tell us nearly everything we need to know about how to improve it. It’s often easy to discern complex information about the player’s mental state from their actions in the game, their body language, and sometimes their facial expressions. You can tell if a playtester understands what they can do and what they’re meant to do from the actions they take in the game. You can see if they are putting together concepts that the game has taught them in new ways that they find interesting. You can often tell if someone is interested, bored, or frustrated, just from the way they sit and the exclamations they make. Our play session observation notes and any other recordings we make contain this information.

在《神秘海域》这样的角色动作游戏中,很容易看出玩家是否没有看到某样东西或忘记了自己的目标。当玩家反复跑过他们应该与之互动的物体时,这很可能表明他们看不到它——也许它看起来像是背景的一部分。如果他们不时地走向一个解谜物体并短暂使用它,但随后很长时间都没有碰它,你就知道他们能看到它,但他们认为它并不重要。

In a character-action game like Uncharted, it’s easy to tell when someone isn’t seeing something or has forgotten their goal. When players repeatedly run right past the object they’re meant to be interacting with, it’s a pretty sure sign that they can’t see it—maybe it looks like it’s part of the background. If they go up to a puzzle-solving object from time to time and briefly use it, but then leave it alone for a long time, you know they can see it, but they don’t think it’s important.

除了回顾我们所见内容的记忆之外,花时间回顾我们在游戏测试期间所做的笔记也很重要。正如我们之前所讨论的那样,记忆很容易受到情绪的影响,小事情可能会变得很重要。当我在游戏测试后回顾我的笔记时,我会寻找我一遍又一遍写下相同内容的模式,这表明应该解决一个主要问题:“玩家找不到通往关卡外的门”或“玩家认为他们已经按到了所有正确的开关”。我会将我的笔记转移到我的(1)必须修复、(2)可能修复或(3)新想法的列表中,以便稍后与团队一起讨论。

It’s important to take the time to review the notes we take during playtests, in addition to reviewing our memories of what we saw. Memory is easily colored by emotion, as we’ve previously discussed, and minor things might prove to be important. When I review my notes after a playtest, I’ll look for patterns where I’ve written down the same thing over and over again, indicating a major problem that should be addressed: “Player can’t find the door leading out of the level” or “Player thinks they’ve already hit all the right switches.” I’ll transfer my notes to my lists of (1) must fix, (2) maybe fix, or (3) new ideas, to go over them with the team later.

游戏会话视频和指标数据在我们回顾笔记时通常很有用,可以让我们更深入地了解游戏测试员面临的问题。通过视频,如果我们仔细记录了某件事发生的时间,我们就可以准确地看到特定游戏测试员在尝试玩游戏做了什么(否则,在你拍摄的数小时视频中很难找到你感兴趣的时刻)。我们可以使用指标数据来了解玩家在一段时间内作为个人和群体的游戏方式,我们将在第 26 章中看到这一点。

Play session videos and metrics data are often useful when we’re reviewing our notes and can give us greater insight into the issues our playtesters were facing. With video, we can see exactly what a particular playtester did as they tried to play a part of the game, if we made a careful note of when something took place (otherwise, it can be hard to find the moment you’re interested in, among the hours of video you captured). We can use metrics data to get a sense of the way players played over time, as individuals and as a group, as we’ll see in chapter 26.

分析离职面谈的结果

Analyzing the Results of the Exit Interviews

接下来,我会分析离职面谈的结果。如果我没有参加部分或全部离职面谈,我很想知道人们对我们游戏的评价。使用在线服务将离职面谈音频转录为文本可以使其更易于查看和使用。因为我们在游戏测试中向每位玩家询问了相同的基本离职面谈问题(即使我们的后续问题有所不同),所以我们可以比较不同游戏测试员的回答,从而很好地了解我们的游戏在不同玩家中的表现。

Next, I analyze the results of the exit interviews. If I wasn’t present for some or all of the exit interviews, I’m keen to find out what people said about our game. Using an online service to transcribe the exit interview audio to text can make it easier to review and use. Because we asked the same basic exit interview questions of every player in our playtests (even if our follow-up questions diverged), we can compare what different playtesters say to gain a good overview of how our game is landing with a variety of players.

最终的开放式问题可能是:这款游戏给你的感觉如何?答案是否符合你的体验目标?当然,作为设计师,我们希望实现我们的项目目标,但不要忽视你没有想到的事情,尤其是当游戏测试者发现体验中有价值时。正如电影制片人斯派克·李所说正如他所说,“很多时候,你会因为电影中一些你原本不想出现的东西而获得赞誉。”游戏也是如此,甚至可能更是如此,因为游戏具有交互性的本质。

The ultimate open-ended question might be: How did the game make you feel? Do the answers align with your experience goals? Of course, as designers we want to meet our project goals, but don’t discount things you didn’t expect to hear about, especially if the playtesters found some value in the experience. As filmmaker Spike Lee is quoted as saying, “A lot of times you get credit for stuff in your movie you didn’t intend to be there.” So it goes for games, maybe even more so, because of the nature of interactivity.

评估离职面试反馈是一个主观过程。离职面试中所说的内容并非全都信以为真,你需要运用自己的解读能力,对听到的内容做出细致入微的判断。让其他人参与进来。与队友、朋友或其他了解你的游戏并理解你的创作目标的人一起工作时,理解游戏测试员的反馈通常更容易。

Evaluating exit interview feedback is a subjective process. Not everything that’s said in an exit interview can be taken at face value, and you’ll be called on to use your powers of interpretation and to make nuanced judgment calls about the things that you hear. Bring other people into the process. It’s often easier to understand playtester feedback when you work together with a teammate, a friend, or someone else who knows your game and understands your creative goals.

分析专注力测试的结果

Analyzing the Results of the Focus Test

如果您在调查或离职面谈中对标题、关键艺术、徽标设计或其他任何内容进行了重点测试,希望它能证实您已经知道的事情:您选择了一个好标题,对其进行了出色的图形设计处理,并为您的游戏制作了一些好的关键艺术。如果您得到的结果并非如此,那么是时候对不足之处做更多的工作了。

If you included a focus test of your title, key art, logo design, or anything else in your survey or exit interview, hopefully it confirmed what you already knew: that you’ve chosen a good title, given it a great graphic design treatment, and have made some good key art for your game. If you got results other than this, it’s time to do some more work on whatever is falling short.

一旦达到 alpha 里程碑,不要拖延最终确定游戏名称。您需要尽快开始接触潜在受众,为此您需要一个社交媒体帐户,该帐户的名称需要与您的游戏名称相对应。您的游戏需要具有强大的身份,部分可以通过其名称、关键艺术和徽标来理解,因此当您向公众展示游戏时,这三者都很重要。我们将在第 30 章中回顾这个主题。

Once you reach the alpha milestone, don’t delay in finalizing the title of your game. You’ll need to start reaching out to your potential audience soon, and in order to do that you’ll need a social media account, which will need a name corresponding to your title. Your game needs a strong identity, one that will partly be understood through its title, key art, and logo, so all three will be important as you present your game to the public. We’ll come back to this subject in chapter 30.

根据正式游戏测试收到的反馈采取行动

Acting on the Feedback Received from a Formal Playtest

对于我们在回答某个问题时得到的每一个低分,对于我们从观察游戏测试者的游戏过程中得出的每一个结论,对于我们从离职面谈中得到的每一条反馈,我们都需要采取行动,我们必须在整个项目的背景下进行评估。我们是否想在下一次正式游戏测试中努力提高我们在某个调查类别中的得分?我们是否会根据游戏过程观察或离职面谈的回应来修复某些问题或添加新内容?我们已经在处理多少不同的问题?当我们考虑到所有需要实施的事情时,我们还剩下多少时间?

For each of the low scores that we get in response to a particular question, from each conclusion that we draw from watching playtesters play, and for each of the pieces of feedback that we get from our exit interviews, there’s an invitation to action on our part that we must evaluate in the context of the whole project. Do we want to work to improve our score in a particular survey category in the next formal playtest? Will we work to fix something or add something new based on a play session observation or an exit interview response? How many different issues are we already dealing with? How much time do we have left, when we consider all the things we have left to implement?

对我来说,正确评估正式游戏测试中所有不同类型的反馈可以归结为一种简单的方法。只需列出所有被确定为问题、潜在问题和新想法的事情。将它们按非常重要、比较重要和不太重要的顺序排列。如果需要,请选择更多优先级别——您的列表可能会很长。

For me, proper evaluation of all of the different types of feedback from a formal playtest comes back to a simple method. Just make a list of all the things that have been identified as problems, potential problems, and new ideas. Prioritize them as very important, somewhat important, and less important. Choose more levels of prioritization if necessary—your lists might turn out to be quite long.

然后,在下一次工作中,决定你首先要解决的问题。因为我采用同心开发,所以我通常会先修复游戏中已有的问题,然后再添加新内容。请记住:玩家并不知道你的游戏中本可以包含的所有好东西,但他们肯定会注意到游戏中运行不佳的东西。

Then, in your next working session, decide what you’re going to tackle first. Because I work using concentric development, I will usually fix a problem with something that’s already in the game before I add something new. Remember: players don’t know about all the good things that could have been in your game, but they will certainly notice the things in your game that don’t work well.

如果你进一步对列表进行分类,可能会有所帮助。我发现在游戏测试中发现的大多数问题都属于以下三类之一:

It might help if you categorize your lists further. I find that most of the problems that I identify during a playtest fall into one of these three categories:

  • 漏洞,游戏出现故障、崩溃,或者发生其他非预期的事情。
  • Bugs, where the game glitches, crashes, or does something else that it’s not meant to.
  • 内容问题——也许玩家因为纹理贴图而无法看到可交互的物体,或者因为光线太暗而看不到走廊的入口。
  • Content problems—perhaps players can’t see an interactable object because of the texture map on it, or they can’t see the entrance to a corridor because the lighting is too dark.
  • 设计问题,游戏设计无法支持我们试图给玩家提供的体验。
  • Design problems, where the design of the game doesn’t support the experience that we’re trying to give our players.

这三种类型的问题经常会重叠。错误或内容问题可能会导致设计问题。因此,按上述顺序解决这些问题是个好主意。首先修复错误。评估有缺陷的游戏几乎是不可能的,当你使用同心开发时,你应该立即修复你发现的每个错误。然后修复内容问题,特别是如果它们可以快速轻松地修复。更改纹理或灯光通常很容易;创建一个复杂的新动画将花费更长时间,并且可能需要一些规划。当错误被消除并且简单的内容问题得到解决后,你将能够更好地评估你的设计问题。

Very often, these three types of issues will overlap. A bug or a content problem might create a design problem. As a result, it’s a good idea to tackle these problems in the order above. Fix your bugs first. It’s almost impossible to evaluate a buggy game, and you should immediately fix every bug that you find when you’re using concentric development. Then fix your content problems, especially if they’re quick and easy to fix. Changing a texture or the lighting is often easy; creating an elaborate new animation will take longer and might need some planning. When the bugs have been banished and the simple content problems are resolved, you’ll be in a much better place to properly evaluate your design problems.

有时,错误会给玩家的体验带来一些好处,正如老软件开发人员的笑话所言:“这不是错误,这是功能。”你必须决定如何处理这些意外的惊喜。如果有疑问,请参考你的体验目标和游戏设计宏图以获取指导。

Occasionally a bug will add something good to the player’s experience, as honored by the old software developers’ joke: “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.” You’ll have to decide what to do about these happy accidents as they arise. If in doubt, refer to your experience goals and your game design macro chart for guidance.

请记住,根据收到的反馈尝试修复问题时所做的更改可能会(而且很有可能产生意想不到的后果,您也必须应对这些后果。这就是为什么进行多轮正式游戏测试、让您的游戏通过 QA(质量保证)流程、查找和删除最后的错误和内容问题以及处理任何未解决的设计问题会很好。

Remember that the changes you make as you try to fix things based on the feedback you’ve received could—and most likely will—have unintended consequences that you’re also going to have to deal with. That’s why it’s good to have multiple rounds of formal playtesting, to put your game through a QA (quality assurance) process, to find and remove the last of your bugs and content problems, and to deal with any outstanding design problems.

处理棘手的反馈

Dealing with Difficult Feedback

和所有类型的游戏测试一样,尽管我们尽量避免采取防御性措施,但正式的游戏测试可能会给我们带来难以处理的反馈。在那些时候,最好保持距离。晚上休息一下,去锻炼身体,吃一顿健康的饭,早点睡觉,或者和朋友一起玩。冷静而自信地接受困难的反馈:你是一位才华横溢、足智多谋的游戏设计师。你做到了。

As with every type of playtesting, and as much as we try to avoid getting defensive, formal playtesting can present us with feedback that is difficult to deal with. In those times, it’s good to get some distance. Take the evening off, go get some exercise, have a healthy meal, an early night, or some fun with your friends. Come back to the difficult feedback with a cool head and with confidence: you’re a talented and resourceful game designer. You’ve got this.

反馈可能很难,因为你发现了一个严重的问题,但你不知道如何解决它。在这种情况下,开始列出利弊清单。如果你尝试某种解决方案,它会有什么帮助,又会有什么坏处?让另一个人帮你列出清单。他们会看到你看不到的解决方案,或者他们可能会以不同的方式阐述利弊。

Feedback might be difficult because you have identified a serious problem, but you have no idea how to fix it. In a situation like this, start to make lists of pros and cons. If you were to try a certain solution, how might it help, and what would it hurt? Enlist another person to help you make the list. They will see solutions that you can’t, or they might frame the pros and cons differently.

反馈可能很难接受,因为它似乎没有给你任何有用的信息。大多数有创造力的人都重视建设性的批评,但有时正式的游戏测试结果可能看起来只有破坏性。我们不能指望我们的游戏测试员总是提出建设性的批评意见——他们自己可能不是游戏设计师。(虽然我们可以也应该期望我们的游戏测试员有礼貌。当你遇到辱骂的情况时,不要容忍。如果游戏测试员的行为或言语有辱骂性,你应该立即结束游戏测试。)

Feedback might be difficult because it seems like it doesn’t give you anything to work with. Most creative people value constructive criticism, but sometimes what comes out of a formal playtest might only seem destructive. We can’t expect our playtesters always to be constructively critical—they’re probably not game designers themselves. (Although we can and should expect our playtesters to be courteous. Don’t tolerate abusive situations when you encounter them. You should immediately end a playtest if a playtester behaves or speaks in an abusive way.)

当你收到的反馈似乎没有建设性时,作为游戏设计师,你需要找到解决方案。发挥创造性思维,从多个角度考虑问题,并记住,在游戏复杂的动态系统中,一个小小的改变可能会带来意想不到的好结果。

When you receive feedback that doesn’t seem constructive, it’s up to you, as the game’s designer, to find the fix. Think creatively, by considering the problem from many angles, and remember that in the complex dynamic system of a game, a small change might have an unexpectedly good result.

进入下一轮正式游戏测试

Going into the Next Round of Formal Playtesting

一旦我们分析了反馈,决定了要采取的措施,并对游戏进行了一些修复和更改,就该进行另一次正式的游戏测试了。在下一次测试中,我们将看看我们是否改进了游戏,使游戏变得更糟,还是没有任何效果。也许我们修复了一个问题,但却引发了另一个问题。

Once we have analyzed the feedback, decided what we’re going to act on, and made some fixes and changes to our game, it will be time for another formal playtest. In the next test, we’ll look to see whether we’ve improved the game, made it worse, or have had no effect. Maybe we’ll have fixed one problem but caused another.

再次强调,正式游戏测试最好作为系列测试的一部分,尽可能频繁地进行,从 alpha 版开始,在最终“候选发布版”里程碑之前结束。我们的首次正式游戏测试将充满活力、变化无常且充满惊喜。如果一切顺利,我们的最终正式游戏测试将验证我们的游戏是否符合我们的预期。

Again, formal playtests work best as part of a series, taking place as frequently as we can run them, starting around alpha, and finishing just before the final “release candidate” milestone. Our first formal playtests will be lively, erratic, and full of surprises. Our final formal playtests will—if things have gone well—provide validation that our game has turned out as we desired.

正式的游戏测试过程是一项严格、注重细节的工作,但它也非常有趣和令人满意。如果你发现自己喜欢这类工作,可以考虑学习更多关于用户研究和用户体验 (UX) 的知识。正如 Mun Lum 在她的 Prototypr.io 文章“UX 设计是独立于游戏设计的实践吗?”中所描述的那样,游戏工作室越来越多地将可用性专家整合到他们的团队中:“随着游戏规模越来越大,机制和系统越来越复杂,UX 设计师等新角色应运而生。一个新的职位可能已经诞生;游戏行业的大多数 UX 设计师都曾经是游戏设计师,或者有游戏设计背景。” 1

The process of formal playtesting is exacting, detail-oriented work, but it’s also tremendously fun and satisfying. If you find yourself enjoying this type of work, consider learning more about user research and user experience (UX). As Mun Lum describes in her Prototypr.io article “Is UX Design a Separate Practice from Game Design?” game studios are increasingly integrating usability specialists into their teams: “As games get bigger with deeper and more complex mechanics and systems, new roles such as UX designer emerge. A new job title may have been created; most UX designers in the game industry were once game designers or came with a game design background.”1

因此,对于那些喜欢从事实质性的游戏设计工作并希望获得客观可衡量结果的人来说,这是一条很好的职业道路。我们将在下一章中继续讨论测量和创造力的主题,我们将在其中收集有关玩家如何玩游戏的数字信息,并利用这些信息来改进我们的游戏。

So, this is a great career path for people who love to do substantive game design work with objectively measurable results. We’ll pick up these themes of measurement and creativity in our next chapter, where we’ll capture numerical information about how our players play and use it to improve our games.

  1. 1. Mun Lum,“用户体验设计是否与游戏设计分开实践?”,Prototypr.io(博客),2019 年 8 月 23 日,https://blog.prototypr.io/is-ux-design-a-separate-practice-from-game-design-97ae1a03e61c

  2. 1.  Mun Lum, “Is UX Design a Separate Practice from Game Design?,” Prototypr.io (blog), August 23, 2019, https://blog.prototypr.io/is-ux-design-a-separate-practice-from-game-design-97ae1a03e61c.

 

 

26 项游戏指标

26    Game Metrics

遥测一词意为“远距离测量”,源自希腊语词根tele(远程)和metron (测量) 这个词在软件开发领域用于描述收集其他地方正在发生的事情的数据的做法。1您可能知道,您使用的许多软件都会捕获有关您做什么以及何时做的数据,然后“打电话回家”将这些数据发送给软件开发人员或其他方。围绕此类做法的隐私和同意问题经常(并且理所当然地)成为激烈争论的话题。

Telemetry is a word that means “measurement at a distance,” from the Greek roots tele (remote) and metron (measure). The word is used in the world of software development to describe the practice of collecting data about something that is happening somewhere else.1 You’re probably aware that much of the software you use captures data about what you do and when you do it, and then “phones home” to send that data to the software’s developer or another party. The issues of privacy and consent around such practices are often (and rightly) the subject of heated debate.

遥测有时被人机交互专业人士称为仪器,但游戏开发者通常将其称为游戏指标或分析。游戏指标的用途远远超出了简单地收集数据,已经发展成为一种游戏设计实践,即解释这些数据以了解真实玩家的游戏方式,从而改进游戏玩法。它也是游戏业务的重要组成部分。

Telemetry is sometimes called instrumentation by human-computer interaction professionals but is more commonly known as game metrics or analytics by game developers. The use of game metrics goes far beyond simply collecting data and has evolved into the game design practice of interpreting that data to understand how real players play, in order to improve gameplay. It is also an important part of the business of games.

当然,数字游戏总是在进行测量。它们记录玩家按下了哪些按钮以及何时按下。他们可能会检查自己的生物钟,以了解现实世界的时间。设置一些代码来捕获游戏中事件的数据很容易,我们可以用这些数据来分析游戏设计。到目前为止,我们已经研究了各种方法来研究游戏测试员对我们游戏的反应:通过观察、使用调查和离职访谈。我们还可以使用游戏指标来获得有关游戏测试员在游戏中做什么的非常详细的信息,这反过来可以让我们更好地了解他们的体验。

Of course, digital games make measurements all the time. They record what buttons the player presses and when. They might check their internal clock to see what time it is in the real world. It’s easy to set up some code to capture data about events in a game that we can use to analyze the game design. So far, we’ve looked at various ways to study the responses of playtesters to our games: by observation, using surveys, and with exit interviews. We can also use game metrics to gain very detailed information about what playtesters do in our games, which in turn can give us an enhanced understanding of their experiences.

在讨论用于塑造游戏赚钱方式的游戏指标时,您会听到游戏开发者提到分析。游戏分析通常关注玩家返回游戏的规律性以及他们在游戏上花费了多少钱,但他们也可能更详细地研究玩家在游戏中的行为。您可以在网上找到许多关于游戏商业分析的书籍和文章。本章不关注遥测的商业方面,而是研究如何使用易于理解和易于实施的技术从游戏设计中获得对玩家行为的洞察。

You’ll hear game developers refer to analytics when discussing the game metrics used to shape the way that games make money. Game analytics typically focus on the regularity with which players return to games and how much money they spend on the game, but they may also look in greater detail at what players do inside the game. You can find many books and articles online about business analytics for games. Instead of focusing on the business side of telemetry, this chapter will look at how we can gain game design insight into player behavior, using easy-to-understand and simple-to-implement techniques.

顽皮狗的游戏指标

Game Metrics at Naughty Dog

2004 年我加入顽皮狗时,游戏指标的使用早已成为工作室设计文化的一部分。从《古惑狼》开始,顽皮狗就一直使用指标来确保他们的游戏为玩家提供适当的挑战水平,既不会太难,也不会太容易。

By the time I joined Naughty Dog in 2004, the use of game metrics was already a long-standing part of the studio’s design culture. Going all the way back to Crash Bandicoot, Naughty Dog had been using metrics to make sure that their games were providing the right level of challenge for their players, being neither too difficult nor too easy.

在我们对《神秘海域》单人模式进行的每次正式游戏测试中,我们都使用指标来记录大量有关玩家游戏进度的数据。每次游戏测试员到达游戏中的新检查点(自动保存点)时,我们都会记录自上一个检查点以来经过的时间。我们还会记录游戏测试员尝试到达该检查点的次数——实际上,就是他们自上一个检查点以来死亡的次数。

In each of the formal playtests that we conducted for the single-player mode of the Uncharted games, we used metrics to record a lot of data about the player’s progression through the game. Every time a playtester reached a new checkpoint (an automatic save point) in the game, the time that had elapsed since the last checkpoint would be recorded. We would also record the number of attempts the playtester had made to reach that checkpoint—in effect, how many times they’d died since the last checkpoint.

在正式游戏测试结束时,我们会将所有这些数据导出到电子表格中(或稍后导出到我们制作的特殊工具中),并开始制作表格和图表以轻松查看数据。我们这样做主要是通过设置,以便我们可以同时查看所有十名游戏测试者的数据,但我们也可以检查单个玩家的数据。

At the end of the formal playtest, we would export all this data into a spreadsheet (or later, into a special tool we made) and begin to make tables and graphs to look at the data easily. We did this mostly by setting things up so that we could look at all ten playtesters’ data at the same time, but we could also inspect the data for individual players.

具体来说,我们会查看从所有十名游戏测试员的数据中得出的每个检查点的平均尝试次数、中位数、最小尝试次数和最大尝试次数。在图 26.1中,你可以看到一个表格,其中列出了玩家对我们认为可能有问题的检查点的尝试次数,因为它们可能太难通过。我们使用条件格式和颜色编码来显示这些数字何时超过某些阈值。例如,尝试次数的平均值或中位数超过六次就是一个危险信号,表明通向该检查点的游戏玩法可能过于困难。我们通过讨论我们想要制作的整体游戏难度来设定这些阈值,但我们也会针对特定检查点覆盖这些阈值,只要我们有意让玩家在短时间内多次失败以创造刺激或使游戏该部分的难度令人难忘。

In particular, we would look at the average (mean), median, minimum, and maximum attempt counts for each checkpoint, derived from the data for all ten playtesters. In figure 26.1, you can see a table of player attempts for the checkpoints that we’d identified as potentially problematic, because they might be too difficult to get past. We used conditional formatting and color coding to show when these numbers exceeded certain thresholds. For example, an average or median of greater than six attempts was a red flag that the gameplay leading up to that checkpoint might be too difficult. We set these thresholds by discussing how difficult of a game we were aiming to make overall, but we would also override them for particular checkpoints, whenever we intentionally wanted the player to fail a lot in a short amount of time to create excitement or to make the difficulty in that part of the game memorable.

图 26.1

Figure 26.1

表格显示了《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》中可能存在问题的尝试次数,该表格来自正式游戏测试期间从十名玩家收集的指标数据。图片来源:《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》 ™ © 2011 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC。《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》是 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC 的商标。由顽皮狗有限责任公司创建和开发。

A table showing potentially problematic numbers of attempts in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, derived from metrics data gathered from ten players during a formal playtest. Image credit: UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception™ © 2011 Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment LLC. Created and developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

一旦我们将指标数据整理成这种易于阅读的格式,我们就会将其分享给团队中的游戏设计师,以便他们开始调查和解决这些可能的问题。通过这种方式,我们创建了一个视角,让我们可以观察真实的人(也就是后来可能购买我们游戏的人)是如何玩游戏的。

Once we’d compiled the metrics data into this type of easily readable format, we would share it with the game designers on the team so they could begin to investigate and address these possible problems. In doing this, we created a lens through which to look at how real people—the same kind of people who might later buy our game—were playing.

我们为每个检查点记录的时间数据也很有用。图 26.2显示了一张图表,总结了九名游戏测试员在早期正式游戏测试中对《神秘海域 3》的进展情况。横轴显示了玩家在游戏中前进时将到达的连续检查点的名称。纵轴显示了每个玩家在到达每个检查点之前在游戏中花费的总时间。(记住,我们记录了检查点之间的时间,但在电子表格中很容易计算出每个检查点的总耗时。)

The time data we recorded for each checkpoint was also useful. Figure 26.2. shows a graph that summarizes the way that nine playtesters progressed through Uncharted 3 in an early formal playtest. The horizontal axis shows the names of the successive checkpoints that would be reached as the player progressed through the game. The vertical axis shows the total amount of time each player had spent in the game up until reaching each checkpoint. (We recorded the time between checkpoints, remember, but it’s easy in a spreadsheet to calculate a running total of the total elapsed time for each checkpoint.)

图 26.2

Figure 26.2

这张图表显示了《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》中测试人员的进度随时间的变化,该图表来自正式游戏测试期间从九名玩家收集的指标数据。图片来源:《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》 ™/© SIE LLC。由顽皮狗有限责任公司创建和开发。

A graph showing playtester progression over time in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, derived from metrics data gathered from nine players during a formal playtest. Image credit: UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception™/© SIE LLC. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

你可以很容易地看到每个游戏测试员玩游戏的速度是快是慢。当游戏测试员的线变得更陡峭时,他们的进度会更慢,要么是因为游戏变得更加困难,因为他们正在寻找游戏中散落的隐藏宝藏,或者可能是因为他们只是不停地停下来欣赏风景。通过将进度时间数据与每个检查点的尝试次数数据进行比较,可以更多地了解可能发生的情况。

You can easily see how quickly or slowly each playtester is getting through the game. Where a playtester’s line gets steeper they’re progressing more slowly, either because the game has become more difficult, because they’re searching for the hidden treasures that are scattered through the game, or maybe because they just keep stopping to admire the view. It’s possible to figure out more about what might be happening by comparing the progression time data against the attempt count data for each checkpoint.

注意,一名玩家比其他玩家进展得更快,而另一名玩家则直接落后并随后退出游戏测试。其余玩家的进展速度大致相同,尤其是在游戏的前三分之一,这部分设计得相当简单。随着游戏进行到中间三分之一,进展速度开始分散。几名玩家几乎并驾齐驱,争夺第二名,而一名玩家则逐渐落后。有趣的是,这种模式在我们进行的几乎每一次正式游戏测试中都会看到,测试对象是许多不同的游戏测试者。在这次游戏测试中,只有一名玩家真正到达了游戏的终点,但在之后的游戏测试中,我们确保每个人都有足够的时间完成游戏。

Notice how one player progresses through the game much more quickly than the others, and that one player falls behind straightaway and later leaves the playtest. The rest of the players progress at about the same rate, especially in the first third of the game, which was designed to be quite easy. As the game moves through its middle third, the progression rates fan out. A couple of the players are nearly neck and neck for second place, and one player gradually falls farther and farther behind. Interestingly, this was a pattern that we would see in nearly every formal playtest we conducted, with many different groups of playtesters. Only one player actually reached the end of the game in this playtest, but in later playtests we made sure that everyone had enough time to finish.

我们利用指标数据深入了解了《神秘海域》游戏的诸多方面。玩家拿起新枪、握一会儿然后又放下,换上旧枪的频率是多少?使用指标数据很容易看出这一点。在我们刚刚实现的投掷机制中,玩家尝试投掷手榴弹的频率是多少?指标数据帮助我们微调了这一新机制的界面和控制。

We used metrics data to gain insight into many aspects of the Uncharted games. How often did players pick up a new gun, hold it for a moment, and then drop it again in favor of their old gun? That was easy to see using metrics data. How often did players attempt to throw back grenades in the throw-back mechanic we’d just implemented? Metrics data helped us fine-tune the interface and controls of this new mechanic.

指标数据还帮助我们解决了《神秘海域》系列游戏中反复出现的棘手问题,这个问题可以追溯到该系列游戏的开始阶段。《神秘海域》系列中的游戏环境在视觉上非常密集——多亏了工作室出色的艺术家,任何一张《神秘海域》的随机截图中都有很多内容。与任何电子游戏一样,对于游戏玩法来说,重要的东西很容易被淹没在所有的视觉信息中。我们发现玩家经常很难发现环境中的“边缘抓取”(我们的玩家角色 Nathan Drake 可以跳上并悬挂的环境元素)。这通常是一场游戏设计灾难,因为它会阻止玩家继续攀爬到游戏的下一部分。问题还因玩家会被看似可以攀爬但实际上不能攀爬的东西分散注意力而加剧。

Metrics data also helped us work on a nasty recurring problem in the Uncharted games, one that dated all the way back to the beginning of the series. The game environments in the Uncharted series are visually very dense—thanks to the studio’s brilliant artists, there is a lot going on in any random Uncharted screenshot. As with any videogame, it’s easy for things that are important for gameplay to get lost among all that visual information. We found that players would often have a difficult time spotting the “edge grabs” in the environments (the environmental elements that our player-character, Nathan Drake, could jump up to and hang from). This was usually a game design disaster, because it would stop the player from climbing onward to the next part of the game. The problem was compounded by the fact that players would get distracted by things that looked like they were climbable but weren’t.

这个问题的解决方案非常巧妙,它来自我之前在顽皮狗的三位同事:Teagan Morrison、Travis McIntosh 和 Jaroslav Sinecky。这些聪明人所做的就是建立一个系统(我们只在正式游戏测试中使用),每当游戏测试中的玩家按下跳跃按钮,并且没有跳到壁架上并悬挂在壁架上,而是在原地跳上跳下时,该系统就会在游戏的三维空间中记录一个 (x, y, z) 坐标。

The solution to this problem was quite brilliant, and it came from three of my former colleagues at Naughty Dog: Teagan Morrison, Travis McIntosh, and Jaroslav Sinecky. What these clever people did was to set up a system—which we only used during formal playtests—that would record an (x, y, z) coordinate in the three-dimensional space of the game every time a player in the playtest pressed the jump button and didn’t end up jumping up to and hanging from a ledge, but instead jumped up and down on the spot.

这些坐标被写入我们网络上的数据库,当游戏测试完成时,我们可以将这些数据的汇总(所有游戏测试者的所有数据)导出回我们开发系统上运行的游戏中。当我们在游戏的调试菜单中选择一个选项时,一个小红球就会被放置在正式游戏测试中十名玩家中每个人每次被阻止跳跃的位置。您可以在图 26.3中看到一个示例。

These coordinates were written to a database on our network, and when the playtest was complete, we could export the aggregate of this data (all the data for all the playtesters) back into the game running on our development systems. When we selected an option in the game’s debug menus, a little red sphere was placed where every thwarted jump had taken place for every one of the ten players in the formal playtest. You can see an example in figure 26.3.

图 26.3

Figure 26.3

《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》中使用的坏跳系统,显示玩家尝试向上攀爬但失败的位置。图片来源:《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》 ™/© SIE LLC。由顽皮狗有限责任公司创建和开发。

The bad jumps system used for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, showing where players had attempted to climb upward and had failed. Image credit: UNCHARTED 3: Drake’s Deception™/© SIE LLC. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

我们称其为坏跳系统,我们可以立即看到坏跳聚集在看起来像边缘抓取但德雷克无法悬挂的物体下方。红色球体集群清楚地告诉我们需要修复什么。在每次游戏测试后的几天里,负责每个关卡的环境艺术家和游戏设计师都会坐在一起,打开坏跳调试球体检查他们的关卡。他们会讨论可以对艺术作品或设计进行哪些更改,以改善我们的游戏测试员将背景艺术误认为可抓取边缘的每种情况。

We called this our bad jumps system, and we could immediately see the bad jumps clustered beneath objects that looked like edge grabs but that Drake couldn’t hang from. The clusters of red spheres told us clearly what we needed to fix. In the days after each playtest, the environment artists and game designers responsible for each level would sit down together and go through their levels with the bad jumps debug spheres turned on. They would discuss the changes that could be made to either artwork or design to improve each situation where our playtesters had mistaken a piece of background art for a grabbable edge.

这不仅有助于改善我们的游戏设计,还简化了艺术家和设计师之间的协作过程。当然,当游戏的美观与游戏玩法考虑发生冲突时,艺术家和设计师有时很难达成一致,尤其是当我们只能依靠自己的主观观点时观点。坏跳转系统为我们提供了非常客观的信息,让我们知道某个特定情况是大问题还是小问题,并且它有助于缓解这个可能充满压力的协作过程的压力。

This not only helped improve our game’s design but it eased the collaborative process between artists and designers. Of course, it can sometimes be difficult for artists and designers to reach agreement when the good looks of the game come into conflict with gameplay considerations, especially when all we have to go on are our subjective points of view. The bad jumps system gave us very objective information about whether a particular situation was a major problem or something more minor, and it helped take a lot of the heat out of this potentially charged collaborative process.

这些示例取自一款叙事动作游戏的单人模式,但指标数据可用于对多种类型的游戏设计产生积极影响,从电子竞技游戏(我们想要调查特定能力的使用频率)到互动叙事游戏(我们想要了解玩家走特定故事路线的频率)。我鼓励您跳出固有思维模式,找到巧妙的新数据收集方法,让您对玩家在游戏中每时每刻的实际行为有扎实的了解和新的见解。

These examples are from the single-player mode of a storytelling action game, but metrics data can be used to make a positive difference in the design of many types of games, from eSports games, where we want to investigate the frequency of use of particular abilities, to interactive narrative games, where we want to see how often players take a particular story path. I encourage you to think beyond the obvious and to find ingenious new ways of gathering data that gives you solid knowledge about—and new insight into—what your players actually do from moment to moment in your games.

在游戏中实施指标

Implementing Metrics in Your Game

游戏指标系统通常只需一点编码能力即可轻松实现,尽管这项工作可能需要您学习一些新的函数调用。您可以使用许多现成的软件包,这些软件包可能根本不需要您进行任何编码。在撰写本文时,Unity 和 Unreal 都具有良好的游戏内分析插件,而且相对易于使用。

Game metrics systems are often simple to implement with a little coding ability, although this work may require you to learn some new function calls. There are many off-the-shelf packages you can use, which may not require you to do any coding at all. At the time of writing, both Unity and Unreal have good in-game analytics plug-ins that are relatively easy to use.

首先决定要收集哪种指标数据。如果你以前没有这样做过,最好从一两种不同类型的数据开始。你稍后可以添加更多。与你的队友一起集思广益,讨论你可以收集的数据类型,并讨论你可以从每种类型中学到什么。

Start by deciding what kind of metrics data you want to gather. When you haven’t done this before, it’s good to begin with just one or two different types of data. You can add more later. Brainstorm with your teammates about the types of data you could possibly collect and discuss what you could learn from each type.

  • 一种常见的指标数据是记录玩家在游戏各个部分所花费的时间。
  • A commonly collected type of metrics data records how long the player spends in each part of the game.
  • 如果玩家可以在游戏中失败并重新开始,请考虑计算他们完成每个部分的尝试次数。
  • If the player can fail and start over in your game, consider counting the number of attempts they make to complete each section.
  • 您可以记录玩家何时何地使用您提供的机制。
  • You could record when and where the player uses the mechanics you have given them.
  • 您可以跟踪与资源相关的价值,例如玩家随着时间推移获得的经验值,或者他们当前拥有多少游戏货币。
  • You might track values associated with resources, such as the experience points the player earns over time, or how much in-game money they currently have.

考虑一下指标数据的粒度:您读取数据的频率,以及您总共收集了多少数据。宁可数据太多——您以后可以随时过滤——但要小心:我见过指标系统因为每帧都记录数据而导致游戏崩溃,输出文件变得非常大。适合您游戏的指标粒度取决于您制作的游戏类型及其总长度。

Think about the granularity of your metrics data: how frequently you make a reading, and therefore how much data you gather overall. Err on the side of too much—you can always filter it later—but be careful: I’ve seen metrics systems that crashed their games because data was being recorded every frame and the output file became huge. The right granularity of metrics for your game will depend on the type of game you’re making and its overall length.

如果您希望创建自己的指标数据系统,则需要编写一个在整个游戏过程中保持活动的脚本。此脚本将包含一个函数,每当您想要从游戏中捕获一些数据时都可以调用该函数,该函数将一个或多个变量值复制到字符串中,并复制一些文本以使其易于阅读,然后将该字符串添加到写入计算机硬盘的文本文件中。(该字符串也可以写入某个数据库中。)

If you wish to create your own metrics data system, you will need to write a script that remains active throughout the course of the game. This script will contain a function that can be called whenever you want to capture some data from the game, which copies one or more variable values into a string, along with some text to make it human-readable, and then adds that string to a text file written out to the computer’s hard drive. (The string could also be written to a database somewhere.)

您可以在游戏中发生特定事件时或以固定时间间隔调用该函数。例如,每当玩家按下跳跃按钮时,您可以记录游戏中的当前时间,并将其复制到以文本开头的字符串中:“玩家跳跃:”或者每十秒记录一次游戏中的当前时间和玩家角色的健康状况,从而为您提供健康状况随时间上升和下降的相对细粒度的记录。

You can either call the function whenever a particular thing occurs in the game or at a regular interval. For example, whenever the player presses the jump button, you could record the current time in the game, and copy it into a string preceded by the text: “player jumped:” Or once every ten seconds you could record the current time in the game and the player-character’s health, giving you a relatively fine-grained record of the way the health rises and falls over time.

您可以在本书的网站 playfulproductionprocess.com 上找到帮助您为游戏设置指标数据系统的资源。

You can find resources to help you set up metrics data systems for your game on the website for this book, playfulproductionprocess.com.

指标数据和同意

Metrics Data and Consent

当我们设计软件来获取他人信息时,我们应该停下来思考我们的做法是否合乎道德。隐私权是世界上许多社区都十分重视的价值观,在某些地方,隐私权已被写入宪法或法律。作为游戏制作者,我们可以在获取玩家的指标数据之前征求玩家的同意,以确保我们的行为合乎道德。

When we design software to capture information about someone else, we should stop and consider whether what we’re doing is ethical. The right to privacy is a value held very strongly by many communities in the world, and it is enshrined in the constitution or the law in some places. As game makers, we can ensure that we are behaving ethically by seeking our players’ consent before we capture metrics data about them.

对于玩家何时跳跃或打开门的数据,这可能不是必需的,但如果涉及玩家的个人信息(例如,与他们的信仰或健康有关),那么获得他们的许可来记录这些信息就很重要在您的指标数据中。您可以在游戏开始时通过屏幕选择加入或退出。如果玩家不同意,则不要记录他们的数据。宁可寻求同意。

This may not be necessary for data about when a player jumps or opens a door, but if it involves personal information about the player (for example, related to their beliefs or to their health), then it is important to get their permission to record that information in your metrics data. You could do this with a screen to opt in or out at the start of the game. If the player doesn’t consent, then don’t record their data. Err on the side of seeking consent.

测试指标数据系统

Testing Metrics Data Systems

定期测试指标数据系统以确保其正常运行非常重要。根据我的经验,这些可能是游戏中最脆弱的部分之一,也许是因为它们默默无闻地运行,所以很容易注意不到它们的故障。在我职业生涯的早期,我曾进行过一次昂贵的正式游戏测试,但却没有给我们提供任何指标数据,因为我们的数据收集机制存在一个简单问题,我们未能及时发现。

It’s important to test metrics data systems regularly to make sure that they’re working correctly. In my experience, these can be among the most fragile parts of a game, and, perhaps because they operate silently, it’s easy not to notice that they broke. Early in my career, I had an expensive formal playtest fail to give us any metrics data at all, because of a simple problem with our data-gathering mechanisms that we failed to catch in time.

测试指标系统非常简单,只需在与正式游戏测试相同的条件下玩游戏,并确保成功输出正确的数据即可。注意测试游戏的方式与正式游戏测试使用游戏的方式之间的细微差异。例如,指标数据出现问题的一种常见方式是,如果游戏在连续的游戏测试者之间没有退出并重新启动,则指标系统会变得混乱。

It’s easy to test your metrics systems by simply playing the game under the same conditions that your formal playtests will use and looking to make sure that the correct data is being written out successfully. Watch for minor variations between the way that you test the game and the way that the game will be used in the formal playtest. For example, a common way that metrics data problems arise is if the game does not get quit and restarted between successive playtesters, confusing the metrics system.

可视化指标数据

Visualizing Metrics Data

正式游戏测试后,我们需要将指标数据可视化,以便于我们理解。信息设计和数据可视化是令人兴奋的领域,值得游戏设计师终生研究。Edward R. Tufte 的《Envisioning Information》和 Ellen Lupton 的《Design Is Storytelling》包含有关我们可以用来将数字转化为人们可以理解的叙述的技术的深刻评论。

After a formal playtest, we’ll need to visualize our metrics data to make it easier for us to understand. Information design and data visualization are exciting fields worth a lifetime of study for game designers. Edward R. Tufte’s Envisioning Information and Ellen Lupton’s Design Is Storytelling contain insightful commentary about techniques that we can use to turn numbers into narratives that people can understand.

许多人在学校里学习如何通过制作线形图、条形图和饼图来表示数据,这些都是可视化指标数据的好方法。每个电子表格软件包都包含从数据表创建图表的工具。它们可能需要一点时间来学习,但通常易于使用且功能强大。不要忘记标记轴,添加图例以清楚地描述所表示的数据,并充分利用颜色和形状。如果使用条件格式对重要数字进行颜色编码并使它们“突出”,那么汇总重要数据的表格效果会很好,如图26.1所示。

Many people learn how to represent data in school by making line graphs, bar graphs, and pie charts, and these are great approaches to visualizing metrics data. Every spreadsheet package includes tools to create graphs from tables of data. They can take a little time to learn but are usually easy to use and powerful. Don’t forget to label the axes, to include a legend to clearly describe the data being represented, and to use color and shape to your advantage. Tables that summarize important data work well if they use conditional formatting to color-code important numbers and make them “pop,” as in figure 26.1.

另一种流行的游戏指标数据可视化类型是热图,它是游戏过程中某个特定事件在关卡中发生的所有地方的二维或三维表示。您可以使用电子表格的绘图工具来创建此图,或者在游戏引擎中编写一个特殊工具来准确地将您的数据映射到环境视图。在线搜索“热图游戏”,您会找到许多来自您最喜欢的游戏的示例。

Another popular type of data visualization for game metrics data is the heat map, a two- or three-dimensional representation of everywhere in a level that a particular event took place during the course of gameplay. You could use a spreadsheet’s graphing tools to create this or code up a special tool inside your game engine to accurately map your data to a view of the environment. Search online for “heat map game” and you’ll find many examples from your favorite games.

记住要创新思维,并受特定游戏类型带来的设计机遇和挑战的驱动。游戏指标如何帮助您更加自信地确保游戏以您预期的方式实现目标?您的游戏中的“坏跳跃”系统是什么样的?其中指标数据可以帮助您以创新的方式解决棘手的游戏设计问题?

Remember to think innovatively and to be driven by the design opportunities and challenges that come with your particular type of game. How can game metrics help you become more confident that your game is landing in the ways that you intend? What would be the “bad jumps” system for your game, where metrics data helps you solve a thorny game design problem in an innovative way?

游戏指标实施清单

Game Metrics Implementation Checklist

  •    集思广益,找出可追踪的价值观,让您深入了解游戏的设计和玩法。
  •    Brainstorm values that can be tracked that will give you some insight into the game’s design and the way it is played.
  •    实施一种机制将这些值记录为度量数据(简单地记录到文本文件或数据库中)。
  •    Implement a mechanism to record these values as metrics data (simply to a text file or to a database).
  •    在适当的情况下征求玩家的同意来收集指标。
  •    Seek your players’ consent to gather metrics where appropriate.
  •    通过在与正式游戏测试相同的条件下(或尽可能接近的条件下)玩游戏来测试指标系统是否正常运行。
  •    Test that the metrics system is working by playing the game under the same conditions (or as close to them as possible) that your formal playtest will take place.
  •    通过查看测试期间系统输出的信息来检查指标数据是否被正确记录。
  •    Check that the metrics data is being recorded correctly by looking at the information that was output by the system during the test.
  •    使用测试数据,开始开发可视化数据的方法,以便使其更易于阅读和理解。
  •    Using the test data, start to develop ways to visualize the data, in order to make it easier to read and understand.
  •    在正式游戏测试之前立即再次测试系统。
  •    Test the system again immediately before the formal playtest.
  •    在正式的游戏测试中使用度量系统。
  •    Use the metrics system in the formal playtest.
  •    将您在正式游戏测试期间收到的数据可视化,并利用您了解的游戏测试人员的行为来改进游戏设计。
  •    Visualize the data you receive during the formal playtest and use what you learn about the behavior of your playtesters to refine the design of your game.

游戏指标的机遇与局限

The Opportunities and Limits of Game Metrics

游戏指标是一种工具,就像任何工具一样,它们既可以用于好的目的,也可以用于坏的目的。在我们这样的技术艺术形式中,严谨是件好事,用户研究人员也重视科学方法。但我坚信,你不应该把这些技术运用到你作为创意设计师和艺术家的直觉告诉你应该去的地方。

Game metrics are tools, and just like any tool, they can be used for good or for ill. It’s good to be rigorous in a technical artform like ours, and user researchers value the scientific method. But I strongly believe that you shouldn’t go any further with these techniques than your instincts as a creative designer and artist tell you that you should go.

我使用指标来确保我的游戏能为玩家提供我希望他们拥有的体验。我试图发现可能阻碍我的游戏以我希望的方式实现的因素。我抵制住让指标数据将我引向与我的项目目标或我的个人价值观相悖的设计方向的诱惑。你必须自己决定如何在游戏设计中使用指标,这取决于你是谁、你看重什么以及你在什么样的背景下制作游戏——商业、艺术或学术。

I use metrics to make sure that my game is giving players the kind of experience I intend them to have. I’m trying to discover the presence of things that might stop my game from landing in the way I want it to land. I resist the temptation to have my metrics data pull me in a design direction that runs counter to my project goals or to my values as a person. You will have to decide for yourself, depending on who you are, what you value, and what kind of context you are making games in—commercial, artistic, or academic—how you are going to use metrics in the design of your games.

我喜欢这句名言,通常认为是阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦说的,但更有可能是社会学家威廉·布鲁斯·卡梅伦说的:“并非所有可以计算的事物都有意义,也并非所有有意义的事物都可以被计算。” 2由你来决定计算什么和什么是有意义的。

I like this quote, often attributed to Albert Einstein but more likely from sociologist William Bruce Cameron: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”2 It’s up to you to decide what to count, and what counts.

  1. 1. “遥测”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemetry

  2. 1.  “Telemetry,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telemetry.

  3. 2. “并非所有重要的事情都能够被计算”,Quote Investigator,2010 年 5 月 26 日,https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/26/everything-counts-einstein/

  4. 2.  “Not Everything That Counts Can Be Counted,” Quote Investigator, May 26, 2010, https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/26/everything-counts-einstein/.

 

 

27 Alpha 阶段和错误跟踪

27    The Alpha Phase and Bug Tracking

在我们有趣的制作过程中,完整制作阶段有两个主要里程碑:alpha 和 beta。在 alpha 阶段(完整制作进行到一半时),我们的游戏将具有完整的功能和完整的游戏序列,我们将能够至少以占位符的形式玩完它。在 beta 阶段(完整制作结束时),游戏也将具有完整的内容,这意味着游戏中的所有内容都将存在,可供完善。

In our playful production process, the full production phase has two major milestones: alpha and beta. At alpha, partway through full production, our game will be feature complete and game sequence complete, and we’ll be able to play it through, at least in placeholder form. By beta, at the end of full production, the game will also be content complete, which means that everything that’s going to be in the game will be present, ready to be polished.

在完整生产过程中,还有两个阶段:alpha 阶段和 beta 阶段(图 27.1)。在第 23 章中,我们讨论了 QA 测试,即专门的质量保证专家对游戏进行严格测试以查找错误并帮助解决设计问题。alpha 阶段几乎普遍的定义是,它始于软件项目进入 QA 测试时。alpha 阶段在 alpha 里程碑处结束,然后 beta 阶段开始,这将引领我们走向 beta 里程碑。即使您没有专门的 QA 部门,如果您在某个时候开始跟踪错误,您的项目仍然可以有一个适当的 alpha 阶段。我们稍后将介绍错误跟踪技术。

There are two more phases tucked away inside full production: the alpha phase and the beta phase (figure 27.1). In chapter 23, we talked about QA testing, where dedicated quality assurance experts rigorously test a game to find bugs and help solve design problems. An almost universal definition of the alpha phase is that it begins when a software project enters QA testing. The alpha phase ends at the alpha milestone, and then the beta phase begins, which sees us through to the beta milestone. Even if you don’t have a dedicated QA department, your project can still have a proper alpha phase, if you just start tracking bugs at some point. We’ll look at techniques for bug tracking in a moment.

图 27.1

Figure 27.1

阿尔法阶段和贝塔阶段隐藏在全面生产中。图片来源:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。

The alpha phase and the beta phase tucked away inside full production. Image credit: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, Mattie Rosen, and Richard Lemarchand.

当软件处于 alpha 阶段时,它有时会出现错误、不稳定且相当不完整。在游戏开发中,出现错误和不稳定的软件是非常不受欢迎的。我们需要在整个制作过程中保持游戏处于高度可玩的状态。这样,每次我们添加新机制或内容时,我们都可以运行游戏测试来评估新部分对整个游戏的影响。这就是我们使用同心开发的原因,正如我们在第 13 章中讨论的那样。

When a piece of software is in its alpha phase, it is sometimes buggy, unstable, and considerably incomplete. In game development, buggy and unstable software is highly undesirable. We need to keep our game in a highly playable state throughout full production. That way, each time we add a new mechanic or some content, we can run a playtest to evaluate the impact that the new part has on the game as a whole. This is why we use concentric development, as we discussed in chapter 13.

然而,随着 alpha 里程碑的临近,我们可能不得不放弃同心式开发,以便将 alpha 所需的所有功能和占位符级别添加到游戏中。这将要求我们再次改变方向,保留同心式开发的最佳方面,同时采用一些新方法,让我们能够高效地前进。我们将在第 29 章中讨论这种方法的变化。

However, as the alpha milestone draws closer, we will probably have to move away from concentric development in order to get all the features and placeholder levels into the game that we need to be there for alpha. This will require us to make another change of gears, keeping the best aspects of concentric development while adopting some new methods that allow us to move forward efficiently. We’ll look at this change in approach in chapter 29.

一些游戏平台(大多数游戏机和一些移动和虚拟现实平台)要求游戏在发布前通过认证流程。项目的 alpha 阶段是开始详细研究认证要求的最佳时机,以便为团队需要完成的额外工作做好准备以符合这些要求。您可以在第 34 章中阅读更多相关内容。

Some game platforms—most game consoles and some mobile and virtual reality platforms—require games to pass a certification process before they can be released. The alpha phase of a project is the right time to begin studying the certification requirements in detail in preparation for the extra work the team will need to do to comply with them. You can read more about this in chapter 34.

一种简单的错误跟踪方法

A Simple Bug Tracking Method

对于每款游戏,无论大小,在完整制作过程中的某个时刻,有条不紊地查找、列出和修复隐藏在游戏中、等待破坏玩家体验的错误非常重要。只要你在完整制作过程中开始这样做,你就可以认为自己处于项目的 alpha 阶段。

For every game, large or small, it’s important at some point during full production to become methodical about finding, listing, and fixing the bugs that are hiding away inside your game, waiting to mess up the player’s experience. Whenever you start doing this during full production you can consider yourself to be in the alpha phase of your project.

首先制定测试计划。测试计划通常由 QA 主管与项目的创意主管、制作人以及可能的部门主管共同制定。对于小型团队,尽可能多地让团队成员参与进来。测试计划有点像一道菜的食谱或周末度假计划。我们有一些想要完成的事情,对我们需要的元素和工具以及可能面临的问题有所了解。我们列出清单并给它们一个重要性层次,以告诉我们应该首先解决哪些问题。我们可能还想说明测试过程不会涵盖哪些内容,这让 QA 和开发团队都有机会为他们的工作设定一些界限。

Start by developing a test plan. A test plan is usually designed by the head of QA, working with the project’s creative leads, producers, and possibly department leads. For a small team, involve as many of the team as is practical. A test plan is a bit like a recipe for a meal or a plan for a weekend away. We have some things we want to accomplish, a sense of the elements and tools we need, and the problems we might face. We draw up lists and give them a hierarchy of importance to tell us what we should tackle first. We might also want to say what the test process won’t cover, which gives both QA and the development team a chance to set some boundaries around their work.

测试规划是一门成熟的学科,您可以在网上找到大量有关制定良好测试计划的详细信息。Ashley Davis 和 Adam Single 在他们的 Gamasutra 文章“游戏开发测试”中提出了大量有关为游戏创建测试计划的详细技术建议。1

Test planning is a mature discipline, and you can find a lot of detailed information online about devising a good test plan. Ashley Davis and Adam Single present a lot of detailed and technical advice about creating a test plan for a game in their Gamasutra article, “Testing for Game Development.”1

制定计划后,您就可以开始测试游戏了。这通常需要花时间按照测试计划有序地玩游戏,并记录您发现的错误。最好测试构建版本,而不是在编辑器中运行游戏,因为构建版本的行为可能有所不同。请注意,游戏的 QA 测试人员通常不会像普通玩家会这样做。他们在玩游戏时会仔细检查每种可能的互动类型,留意那些行为不正常的事物。如果你的团队规模很小,你就必须想清楚如何测试你的游戏。聘请某人帮助你进行 QA 始终是一项不错的投资。

Once you have a plan, you are ready to start testing your game. This is usually a question of taking the time to play a build of the game in an orderly way that follows the test plan and keeping a record of the bugs you discover. It is better to test a build, rather than running the game in the editor, as a build may behave differently. Note that QA testers for games usually don’t just play the game freely and exploratively as a regular player would. They carefully check each type of possible interaction as they play, on the lookout for things that are not behaving as they should. If you’re on a small team, you’ll have to figure how you will test your game. Hiring someone to help you with QA is always a good investment.

即使您的团队规模很小,您只是在开发时自己测试,您也应该记录您发现的错误。专业游戏开发人员使用专用数据库(有时称为错误跟踪器)来保存错误列表以及每个错误附带的信息。在撰写本文时,一些流行的错误跟踪工具包括 Jira、Bugzilla 和 Mantis。

Even if your team is so small that you are just testing it yourself as you develop it, you should still make a record of the bugs you find. Professional game developers use dedicated databases, sometimes known as bug trackers, to keep a list of bugs and the information that accompanies each one. Some popular bug tracking tools at the time of writing include Jira, Bugzilla, and Mantis.

对于小型项目,只需使用电子表格即可跟踪错误。为各列指定以下标题(或使用您可以在 playfulproductionprocess.com 上找到的模板):

For a small project, it’s possible to track bugs simply using a spreadsheet. Give the columns these headings (or use the template you can find at playfulproductionprocess.com):

  • 错误编号
  • Bug Number
  • 提交日期和时间
  • Date and Time Submitted
  • 构建日期和时间(或构建编号)
  • Date and Time of Build (or Build Number)
  • 概括
  • Summary
  • 班级
  • Class
  • 优先事项
  • Priority
  • 类别
  • Category
  • 描述
  • Description
  • 游戏中的位置
  • Location in Game
  • 可重复性
  • Reproducibility
  • 重现步骤
  • Steps to Reproduce
  • 涉及剧本
  • Script Involved
  • 分配给
  • Assigned To
  • 地位
  • Status
  • 附件
  • Attachments
  • 笔记
  • Notes
  • 解决方案说明
  • Resolution Notes

让我们看一下每个标题以及您将在每列中保留的信息。

Let’s take a look at each of these headings and the information you’ll keep in each column.

错误编号

Bug Number

每个 Bug 都应该有一个唯一的编号,以便您可以快速轻松地参考该 Bug。

Each bug should have a unique number, so that you can refer to the bug quickly and easily.

提交日期和时间

Date and Time Submitted

创建错误时,应记录创建日期和时间。许多电子表格允许您使用快捷键组合输入日期和时间。

When the bug is created, the date and time of creation should be recorded. Many spreadsheets allow you to enter the date and time with a shortcut key combination.

构建日期和时间(或构建编号)

Date and Time of Build (or Build Number)

对于每个被跟踪的错误,您应该知道最初发现该错误的游戏版本。请参阅第 5 章,了解有关版本及其制作方法的信息。

For every bug that is tracked, you should know the build of the game in which it was originally found. See chapter 5 to read about builds and how to make them.

概括

Summary

这应该包括对该错误的一个非常简短的描述,并作为该错误的标题。

This should include a very brief description of the bug and serves as the bug’s title.

班级

Class

错误分为不同的等级,以描述其严重程度。每个等级的确切定义可能因工作室而异,但以下一组定义相当常见:

Bugs come in different classes that describe their degree of severity. The exact definition of each class can vary from studio to studio, but this set of definitions is fairly common:

  • 精彩表演
  • Showstopper
  •   必须立即修复一个错误,因为它会阻止游戏在某个特定点之后继续进行(从而导致测试)。
  •   A bug that must be fixed immediately, because it prevents the game from being played (and therefore tested) beyond a certain point.
  • A
  • A
  •   严重的错误会严重干扰游戏的运行,必须予以修复。
  •   A severe bug that significantly interferes with the functioning of the game and must be fixed.
  • B
  •   严重影响游戏功能或体验的错误,可能需要修复。
  •   A bug that significantly interferes with the functionality or experience of the game and that should likely be fixed.
  • C
  • C
  •   不太严重的错误不会显著影响游戏的功能或体验,但如果可能的话应该修复。
  •   A less severe bug that doesn’t significantly interfere with the functioning or experience of the game, but that should be fixed if possible.
  • 评论
  • Comment
  •   错误测试人员会利用此错误类别向开发人员发送反馈或想法。这是 QA 和游戏开发人员之间沟通的重要渠道。
  •   This bug class is used by the bug testers to send feedback or ideas to the developers. This can be a valuable channel of communication between QA and the game’s developers.

优先事项

Priority

对于每类错误,分配优先级也是很有用的。“B1”错误需要紧急修复,尽管不像“A3”错误那么紧急,而“B3”错误可能可以等待。

Within each class of bug, it can be useful to also assign a priority. A “B1” bug needs fixing urgently, although not as urgently as an “A3” bug, while a “B3” bug can probably wait.

类别

Category

如果可以说出错误属于哪个类别(按照修复问题所需的学科进行分类),这可以使错误更容易理解,并且可以更容易地确定应该将错误分配给团队中的哪个人。示例类别可以是:

If it’s possible to say what category the bug falls into, as sorted by the discipline that will be needed to fix the problem, this can make the bug easier to understand, and can make it easier to work out who on the team the bug should be assigned to. Example categories could be:

  • 编程
  • Programming
  • 2D 艺术
  • 2D art
  • 3D 艺术
  • 3D art
  • 游戏设计
  • Game design
  • 写作
  • Writing
  • 动画片
  • Animation
  • 声音的
  • Audio
  • 音乐
  • Music
  • 视觉效果
  • Visual effects
  • 触觉
  • Haptics
  • 用户界面
  • UI
  • 字幕
  • Subtitles
  • 其他
  • Other

描述

Description

这是对错误的描述比摘要中更详细的地方。为错误写出好的描述本身就是一门艺术。最好的描述将使用清晰、简洁的语言来描述错误测试人员期望发生什么到底发生了什么。不要包含有关错误发生的位置、发生频率或如何重现它的信息 — — 这些内容都有自己的部分。

This is where the bug is described in greater detail than it was in the summary. Writing good descriptions for bugs is an art unto itself. The best description will use clear, concise language to describe what the bug tester expected to happen and what actually happened. Don’t include information about where the bug happens, how often it happens, or how to reproduce it—those things have their own sections.

游戏中的位置

Location in Game

对于修复 bug 的人来说,知道 bug 究竟发生在游戏中的哪个位置非常有用。这对于只发生在游戏中某个特定位置的 bug 尤其重要。最好使用游戏引擎中的 2D 或 3D 坐标来记录,或许还可以通过屏幕截图来支持。

It can be very useful to the people fixing the bug to know exactly where in the game the bug occurred. This is particularly important for any bug that only happens at one particular place in the game. This is best recorded using 2D or 3D coordinates from the game engine, perhaps supported by a screenshot.

可重复性

Reproducibility

有些错误每次您尝试重现时都会发生,而有些错误则只是偶尔发生,有些则只会出现一次。您可以使用以下类别:

Some bugs happen reliably every time you try to reproduce them—others only happen sometimes, and some are only ever seen once. You could use these categories:

  • 总是
  • Always
  • 有时
  • Sometimes
  • 很少
  • Rarely
  • 见过一次
  • Seen once

重现步骤

Steps to Reproduce

这是在游戏中重现错误必须采取的步骤的详细描述,可以减轻“描述”部分的一些负担。

This is a detailed description of the steps that must be taken in the game to reproduce the bug and can relieve some of the burden from the “Description” section.

涉及剧本

Script Involved

如果测试游戏的人能够说出哪个脚本(或其他代码片段)导致了问题,那么在这里记录下来会很有用。调试消息通常会显示代码中发生错误的位置。

If the people testing the game are able to say what script (or other piece of code) caused the problem, it is useful to record it here. Debug messages will often show where in the code an error occurred.

分配给

Assigned To

在这里,错误被分配给特定的团队成员来修复。

This is where the bug is assigned to a particular team member to be fixed.

地位

Status

每个错误在首次创建时都具有“新”状态。错误状态将在其生命周期内发生变化,因为它会在 QA 和开发团队的其他成员之间来回传递,并且会随着链中每个人对错误进行处理而发生变化。

Each bug has the status of “New” when it is first created. The status of the bug will change over its lifetime as it gets passed back and forth between QA and other members of the development team, and as the bug gets worked on by each individual in the chain.

  • 新的
  • New
  •   错误首次创建时的状态。
  •   The status of a bug when it is first created.
  • 已确认
  • Acknowledged
  •   当开发人员收到该错误并准备进行修复时,他们会将状态更改为此。
  •   When the bug is received by the developer who is going to work on fixing it, they change the status to this.
  • 请求信息
  • Request information
  •   如果修复错误的人员需要更多信息来修复它,他们会将状态更改为此,并将错误传回给 QA 经理或编写错误的人员。
  •   If the person who is going to fix the bug needs more information in order to fix it, they change the status to this, and the bug is passed back to the QA manager or whoever wrote the bug.
  • 索赔已固定
  • Claim fixed
  •   当开发人员认为他们已经修复了错误时,他们会将其标记为“声明已修复”,并将其传回 QA 进行回归分析,届时 QA 将检查该错误是否确实已成功修复。
  •   When a developer thinks they’ve fixed the bug, they mark it “Claim fixed” and it gets passed back to QA for regression, when QA will check to see that the bug has indeed been successfully fixed.
  • 无法重现
  • Unable to reproduce
  •   如果开发人员无法重现错误,他们会将状态更改为此,并将其传回 QA 进行回归。QA 部门将检查错误是否仍在发生。
  •   If a developer can’t reproduce a bug, they change the status to this, and it gets passed back to QA for regression. The QA department will check to see whether the bug is still happening or not.
  • 复制
  • Duplicate
  •   如果数据库中已经存在该错误且错误编号不同,则状态将更改为此。
  •   The status gets changed to this if the bug is already in the database with a different bug number.
  • 修复失败
  • Fix failed
  •   如果回归过程中显示“声称已修复”的错误实际上并未修复,则会被标记为“修复失败”并返回给尝试修复该错误的开发人员或他们的经理。
  •   If a “Claim fixed” bug is shown during regression actually not to have been fixed, it gets marked as “Fix failed” and goes back to the developer who had tried to fix it or to their manager.
  • 固定的
  • Fixed
  •   如果回归过程中显示“声称已修复”的错误实际上已被修复,则会将其标记为“已修复”并进入天空的巨大错误墓地。
  •   If a “Claim fixed” bug is shown during regression actually to have been fixed, it gets marked as “Fixed” and goes to the great bug graveyard in the sky.
  • 已关闭(无法修复)
  • Closed (can’t fix)
  •   有时,由于某种原因,错误无法修复,然后错误就会被这样标记。在大多数团队中,只有非常资深的团队成员才能关闭错误。
  •   Sometimes a bug can’t be fixed for one reason or another, and then the bug is marked this way. On most teams, only very senior team members can close bugs.
  • 已关闭(无法修复)
  • Closed (won’t fix)
  •   有时团队成员会因为某些原因决定不修复某个错误 — — 也许修复需要花费太长时间,或者问题不大,或者有人认为这实际上是一个功能,而不是错误。然后错误就会被这样标记。同样,这种决定通常只有非常资深的团队成员才能做出。
  •   Sometimes the team members decide that a bug should not be fixed for some reason—maybe it would take too long, it’s not a big deal, or someone decides that it’s actually a feature, not a bug. Then the bug is marked this way. Again, this decision can usually only be made by very senior team members.
  • 重新开放
  • Reopened
  •   有时已经关闭的错误需要重新打开,然后以此方式标记。
  •   Sometimes a bug that has been closed needs to be reopened, and then it’s marked this way.

附件

Attachments

在报告中附加能够说明错误的屏幕截图或视频通常很有用。

It’s often useful to attach screenshots or videos that illustrate the bug to the report.

笔记

Notes

错误的注释部分是 QA 和开发团队之间来回传递信息的好方法 - 例如,当请求有关错误的更多信息时,或当错误被标记为“修复失败”时。

The notes section for a bug is a good way to pass information back and forth between QA and the development team—for example, when more information is requested about the bug or when a bug is marked as “Fix failed.”

解决方案说明

Resolution Notes

如果修复错误的方式有特殊之处,或者由于某种原因错误被关闭,则可以在此处记录它。

If there’s something special about the way a bug was fixed, or if a bug is closed for any reason, this is the place to record it.

从这些标题中你大概可以看出,错误经过的典型工作流程是:

As you can probably tell from these headings, the typical workflow that a bug passes through is:

  • 这个错误是由 QA 人员或团队中的其他开发人员创建的。
  • The bug is created by someone working in QA or one of the other developers on the team.
  • 该错误被分配给一名开发人员进行修复,开发人员确认他们已收到该错误并且将着手进行修复。
  • The bug is assigned to a developer to be fixed, who acknowledges they have received it and are going to work on it.
  • 开发人员尝试修复该错误。
  • The developer attempts to fix the bug.
  • 当他们认为已经修复该问题时,开发人员会将该错误标记为“声明已修复”。
  • When they think they’ve fixed it, the developer marks the bug “Claim fixed.”
  • 然后,该错误会被送回 QA 进行回归分析——他们会检查该错误是否已被修复。
  • The bug then goes back to QA for regression—they check to see if it has been fixed.
  • 根据回归期间的发现,该错误将被标记为“已修复”或“修复失败”。
  • Depending on the findings during regression, the bug is either marked “Fixed” or “Fix failed.”
  • 如果开发人员需要更多信息,无法重现错误,或者发现错误重复,他们会进行相应标记并将其返回到 QA。
  • If a developer needs more information, can’t reproduce the bug, or discovers that it’s a duplicate, they mark it accordingly and it goes back to QA.
  • 如果开发人员无法修复错误,他们会采取适当的措施,可能是通过他们的经理或团队负责人。然后,错误可能会被传递给可以修复它的其他开发人员,或者可能会被关闭。
  • If a developer can’t fix the bug, they take appropriate action, maybe via their manager or a team lead. The bug might then be passed to a different developer who can fix it, or it might get closed.

这种基于电子表格的简单错误跟踪方法对于小型项目非常有用,并且可以让您掌握在大型团队中使用专用错误跟踪工具所需的知识。不过,您很快就会发现,在电子表格中跟踪错误很麻烦,我建议您找到并使用具有错误跟踪功能的项目管理工具。Meredith Hall 在她的 Gamasutra 文章“选择游戏开发项目管理工具”中很好地概述了各种项目管理工具的错误跟踪功能。2

This simple spreadsheet-based bug tracking method will be useful for small projects and will equip you with the knowledge that you’ll need to work with a dedicated bug tracking tool on a larger team. You’ll quickly find that tracking bugs in a spreadsheet is unwieldy, though, and I recommend that you find and use a project management tool with a bug tracking feature. Meredith Hall provides a good overview of the bug tracking features of various project management tools in her Gamasutra article, “Choosing a Project Management Tool for Game Development.”2

现在您已经了解了如何跟踪错误,您可以开始这样做并进入项目的 alpha 阶段。我们将在第 32 章中回到错误修复的主题。掌握了有关 alpha 阶段的信息后,让我们深入了解 alpha 里程碑以及我们将如何实现这一目标。

Now that you understand how to track bugs, you’re ready to start doing so and to enter the alpha phase of your project. We’ll come back to the subject of bug fixing in chapter 32. Equipped with this information about the alpha phase, let’s take an in-depth look at the alpha milestone and how we’re going to get there.

  1. 1. Ashley Davis 和 Adam Single,《游戏开发测试》,Gamasutra,2016 年 7 月 26 日,https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AshDavis/20160726/277825/Testing_for_Game_Development.php

  2. 1.  Ashley Davis and Adam Single, “Testing for Game Development,” Gamasutra, July 26, 2016, https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AshDavis/20160726/277825/Testing_for_Game_Development.php.

  3. 2. Meredith Hall,“选择游戏开发的项目管理工具”,Gamasutra,2018 年 6 月 29 日,https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MeredithHall/20180629/321013/Choosing_A_Project_Management_Tool_For_Game_Development.php

  4. 2.  Meredith Hall, “Choosing a Project Management Tool for Game Development,” Gamasutra, June 29, 2018, https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/MeredithHall/20180629/321013/Choosing_A_Project_Management_Tool_For_Game_Development.php.

 

 

28 阿尔法里程碑

28    The Alpha Milestone

我们在上一章中讨论了项目的 alpha 阶段和错误跟踪技术。现在让我们来看看 alpha 里程碑,它标志着 alpha 阶段的结束。在 alpha 里程碑,游戏是“功能完整的”。这是大多数类型的软件开发(从游戏到商业)中 alpha 里程碑的含义。最终游戏中的每个功能都应该存在,游戏才被视为已达到 alpha 里程碑。在我们的游戏制作过程中,我们还将在 alpha 阶段“完成游戏序列”——稍后会详细介绍。

We discussed our project’s alpha phase and techniques for bug tracking in the previous chapter. Now let’s take a look at the alpha milestone, which marks the end of the alpha phase. At the alpha milestone, the game is “feature complete.” This is the meaning of the alpha milestone across most types of software development, from games to business. Every feature that will be in the final game should be present for the game to be considered to have reached the alpha milestone. In our playful production process, we’re also going to be “game sequence complete” at alpha—more on that in a while.

特色与内容

Features and Content

让我们仔细看看“功能”这个词以及它的含义。为了便于讨论,我们可以说游戏由两种类型的东西组成:功能和内容。一般来说,功能是功能的一部分。它们是让我们的游戏运转起来的机制。如果游戏中的某些东西由逻辑控制或对玩家的输入做出反应,那么它很可能就是一项功能。

Let’s take a closer look at this word feature and what it means. For the sake of this discussion, we might say that games are made up of two types of stuff: features and content. Generally speaking, features are pieces of functionality. They’re the mechanisms that make our game tick. If something in a game is controlled by logic or reacts to the player’s input, chances are that it’s a feature.

为了说明这个想法,下面列举一些示例特征:

To illustrate this idea, here’s a handful of example features:

  • 角色动作游戏中根据玩家的输入控制玩家角色的功能
  • The feature in a character-action game that controls the player-character in response to the player’s input
  • 社交模拟游戏中控制非玩家角色 (NPC) 在游戏环境中开展业务的功能
  • The feature in a social simulation game that controls nonplayer characters (NPCs) as they go about their business in the game environment
  • 城市建设模拟游戏中的功能,决定建筑物随时间发生的变化
  • The feature in a city-building sim game that determines what happens to a building over time

高阶特征组(如我上面例子中的特征组)通常可以分解为低阶特征列表:

Higher-order groups of features, like the ones in my examples above, can usually be broken out into lists of lower-order features:

  • 玩家角色控制功能可以由控制跑步和跳跃的独立功能组成。
  • A player-character control feature could be made up of separate features that control running and jumping.
  • NPC 控制功能可以由控制行走、将物体从一个地方带到另一个地方以及与玩家角色交谈的独立功能组成。
  • An NPC control feature could be made up of separate features that control walking, taking objects from one place to another, and talking to the player-character.
  • 决定建筑物随时间发生什么的特征可能是由导致建筑物变脏、倒塌或起火的多个独立特征组成。
  • The feature that determines what happens to a building over time could be made up of separate features that make the building become dirty, collapse, or catch fire.

我们可以继续进一步细分这些子功能,直到我们得到代码中作用于代表这些游戏实体的数据结构的特定函数。

We could keep breaking these subfeatures down further until we got to specific functions in code that act on the data structures representing these game entities.

相比之下,内容是构成游戏实体的数据结构和资产,游戏中的功能基于这些实体:艺术品、动画、音效、视觉效果、音乐和对话,仅举几例,它们通过数据捆绑在一起。当然,没有内容就没有功能。如果您编写了一个系统来移动游戏世界中的 NPC,但没有创建代表 NPC 的艺术品、动画和声音,那么该功能实际上并不存在于游戏中。内容通常有助于功能像这样出现在游戏世界中,而功能和内容之间的模糊界限有时会给游戏开发者带来麻烦,我们稍后会看到。

By contrast, content is the data structures and assets that make up the game entities that the features in the game act on: artwork, animation, sound effects, visual effects, music, and dialogue, to name a few, tied together by bundles of data. Of course, you can’t have features without content. If you’ve coded up a system to move NPCs around in your game world but haven’t created the artwork, animation, and sounds that represent an NPC, then the feature isn’t really in the game. Content often helps features show up in the game world like this, and the blurry line between features and content can sometimes lead game developers into trouble, as we’ll see later.

功能齐全

Being Feature Complete

当一款游戏功能齐全时,它的所有功能都已具备:游戏的所有“活动部件”都已实现并且运行良好。如果我们一直采用同心开发,在开发过程中测试游戏并修复错误,这种情况会更容易发生。

When a game is feature complete, all of its features are present: all of the “moving parts” of the game have been implemented and are working well. This happens more easily if we’ve been using concentric development, testing the game and fixing bugs as we go along.

当游戏功能齐全时,游戏中的每种内容都应该包含在内,无论是 NPC 和玩家之间的对话、逻辑谜题、战斗机制还是 AI 寻路算法。如果这是一种机制,并且要加入到游戏中,那么它应该在 alpha 里程碑时出现在某个地方。

When a game is feature complete, every type of thing that will be in the game should be in there, whether those are conversations between NPCs and players, logic puzzles, combat mechanics, or AI pathfinding algorithms. If it’s a mechanism, and it’s going in the game, it should be in there somewhere by the alpha milestone.

然而,随着 Alpha 里程碑的临近,游戏开发者在努力将所有这些移动部件融入游戏时,经常会面临任务规模的挑战。这时,功能和内容之间的界限变得模糊,既可以明智地利用它们来取得积极成果,也可以以破坏性的方式加以利用。

However, as the alpha milestone gets closer, game developers are often challenged by the scale of the task as they work to get all of these moving parts into the game. This is where the blurry line between features and content can become relevant and can either be used intelligently to a positive outcome or exploited in a destructive way.

在我从事游戏行业期间,我从同事那里了解到,在 alpha 阶段,你要确保游戏中每种类型的事物都有。如果 NPC 有某种行为,那么即使你还没有拥有所有会使用这种行为的 NPC,游戏中某个 NPC 也应该会使用该行为。成功完成 alpha 阶段的艺术之一就是选择要实现的内容,这些内容要展现游戏中所有事物可以展现的所有行为。这些行为是游戏的功能,在 alpha 阶段将所有功能纳入其中(如果还有时间进行改进)是制作出色游戏的另一个关键。

During my time in the game industry, I learned from my colleagues that at alpha you want to make sure you have one of every type of thing in the game. If an NPC will have a behavior, that behavior should be used by an NPC somewhere in the game, even if you don’t yet have all the NPCs that will use that behavior. Part of the art of hitting alpha well is choosing content to implement that exhibits all of the behavior that all the things in the game could exhibit. These behaviors are the features of the game, and getting all your features in by alpha, when there’s still time to refine them, is another key to making an excellent game.

如果随着 alpha 里程碑的临近,我们有足够的时间来实现功能,那么我们应该实现游戏中具有独特功能组合的每个实体。这是因为功能之间可能会出现无法预见的交互,需要我们做更多的工作才能让它们很好地协同工作。

If we have plenty of time for implementing features as the alpha milestone gets close, then we should implement every entity in the game that has a unique combination of features. This is because there could be unforeseen interactions between the features that require us to do more work to get them to play together nicely.

如果随着 alpha 里程碑的临近,我们时间越来越少,那么我们可能会考虑实现更少的实体——只要这些实体加在一起能够展示游戏中的所有功能。这条路风险更大,因为即使我们在技术上拥有游戏中的所有功能,但当我们将这些功能放在一起时新的组合,我们可能会对游戏的运作方式有全新的发现。

If we have less time as the alpha milestone approaches, then we might consider implementing fewer entities—just as long as, taken all together, these entities exhibit all of the features in the game. This path is much riskier, because even though we will technically have all of our features in the game, as we put those features together in new combinations, we’re likely to make radical new discoveries about the way that our game works.

在考虑为 alpha 版本实现哪些功能时,不要忘记考虑游戏功能的每一个部分。例如,如果游戏要使用成就系统(无论是游戏内成就系统还是与游戏发行商或平台持有者提供的成就系统相连的成就系统),那么您应该在 alpha 版本中在游戏中设置至少一个成就。

Don’t forget to consider every last part of your game’s functionality when you’re thinking about what to implement for alpha. For example, if the game is going to use an achievements system, either in-game or connected to the achievements system provided by a game publisher or platform holder, then you should set up at least one achievement in your game by alpha.

Alpha 里程碑的部分意义在于,我们正试图加快速度,并做出有关我们将要制作的游戏功能的所有重大发现。我们想知道我们的游戏如何运作,并有足够的时间来解决存在的任何问题,这意味着要完善功能。Alpha 里程碑也是防止功能蔓延的一个特别重要的工具。

Part of the point of the alpha milestone is that we are trying to hurry up and make all the major discoveries about the functionality of our game that we’re going to make. We want to know how our game works with plenty of time left to fix whatever problems exist, and that means becoming feature complete. The alpha milestone is also a particularly important tool to use in the prevention of feature creep.

我在第 17 章中首次提到了功能蔓延,这是范围蔓延的一种。功能蔓延是指开发人员在全面制作过程中对新功能有了令人兴奋的想法,这些想法在游戏设计宏中没有计划,但他们还是决定将其添加到游戏设计中,即使宏本来是“一成不变的”。有时添加新功能是一件好事,特别是如果该功能易于实现并且会为游戏增添一些特别的东西。但功能蔓延可能是一个破坏性强、隐蔽的问题。

I first mentioned feature creep, which is a type of scope creep, in chapter 17. Feature creep happens when developers have exciting ideas for new features during full production, ideas that weren’t planned for in the game design macro, but that they decide to add into the game’s design anyway, even though the macro was meant to be “set in stone.” Sometimes adding a new feature is a good thing to do, especially if the feature will be easy to implement and will add something special to the game. But feature creep can be a destructive, insidious problem.

由于很难预测新功能对项目的影响,因此我们添加的每个新功能都会给项目带来麻烦。如果开发人员不自律,“再添加一个”功能可能会变成涓涓细流。每个新功能可能只需要很少的时间来实现,但可能会引入新的设计问题和新的错误,而处理这些问题和错误可能需要更长的时间。正如我在第 17 章中所说,受到范围蔓延影响的项目有时永远无法完成。它们很容易变成失控的混乱局面,充斥着错误和不连贯、相互竞争的设计方向,无法确定项目何时完成。

Trouble is smuggled into the project with each new feature we add, since it’s hard to predict the impact that they will have on the project. “Just one more” feature can turn into a steady trickle if the developers aren’t disciplined. Each new feature might only take a small amount of time to implement but will probably introduce new design problems and new bugs that could take much, much longer to deal with. As I said in chapter 17, projects that fall prey to scope creep sometimes just don’t ever get finished. They can easily become out-of-control messes of bugs and incoherent, competing design directions, with no way of telling when the project will be done.

功能和内容之间的界限模糊,危险就在这里。一些游戏设计师试图通过把他们计划在 alpha 测试后添加的新功能框定为现有功能的“内容组”,以度过 alpha 测试阶段。有时这样做效果不错,但通常会带来灾难性的错误,在项目本应变得更加稳定和设计更好的时候,却引入了需要修复的重大新错误和需要解决的新设计问题。

This is where the danger due to the blurry line between features and content appears. Some game designers seek to get through the alpha milestone by framing new features that they plan to add after alpha as “content groups” of preexisting features. Sometimes this works out okay, but it often goes disastrously wrong, introducing major new bugs to fix and new design problems to solve at a time when the project is meant to have become more stable and better designed.

根据经验法则,开发人员的经验越丰富(无论是总体经验还是在特定风格或类型的游戏中),他们在 alpha 里程碑中冒险成功的可能性就越大。经验不足的开发人员在 alpha 里程碑中没有以稳健的方式完成功能,因此面临更大的风险,而且他们在 alpha 里程碑之后添加的新功能组在游戏完成后可能不会很好地运行,仅仅是因为没有足够的时间来完善它们。

As a rule of thumb, the more experienced that a developer is—both overall and at working in a particular style or genre of game—the more likely it is that they will be successful when they take risks at the alpha milestone. Developers who are less experienced are exposed to greater risk by not being feature complete in a robust way at the alpha milestone, and new groups of features that they add after the alpha milestone are likely not to work very well when the game is finished, simply because there wasn’t enough time left to polish them.

游戏序列完成

Being Game Sequence Complete

我将邀请您使用 alpha 里程碑的另一个方面,它非常强大。这是我们在顽皮狗工作室总裁 Evan Wells 的指导下开发的一项技术,它彻底改变了我对制作游戏的看法。在创作《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》期间,我们决定在项目的 alpha 里程碑中,我们不仅要完成功能,还要“完成游戏序列”,即让游戏中的每个级别都到位,至少以粗略、占位符、块网格(白盒/灰盒/块状)形式完成。

There is another aspect of the alpha milestone that I’m going to invite you to use, and it’s tremendously powerful. It’s a technique that we developed at Naughty Dog, under the guidance of studio president Evan Wells, and it revolutionized the way that I think about making games. During the creation of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves we decided that at the project’s alpha milestone we would not only be feature complete, but we would also be “game sequence complete” by having every level in the game in place, at least in rough, placeholder, blockmesh (whitebox/graybox/blockout) form.

神秘海域 2的许多关卡在 alpha 阶段就已经非常先进了。游戏中有些关卡只完成了一部分,有些才刚刚开始,还有一些关卡根本就没完成。我们快速充实了那些勉强完成或尚未完成的关卡,使用低多边形块网格创建了大小和长度大致正确的代表性关卡。然后,我们使用关卡加载系统和游戏进程逻辑将所有内容连接在一起,这样我们就可以从头到尾连续玩游戏。

Many of the levels of Uncharted 2 were already very advanced in their development by the alpha milestone. Some of the levels of the game were partway implemented, some were barely begun, and a few hadn’t been built out at all. It was those last barely there and not-there levels that we quickly fleshed out, using low-poly blockmesh to create representative levels of approximately correct size and length. We then connected everything together using our level loading system and the game’s progression logic, so that we could play through the game continuously from beginning to end.

在 alpha 阶段,我们能够从头到尾玩完整个游戏 — — 即使游戏的大部分内容还处于初级阶段,玩起来更像是跑马圈地 — — 我们能够很好地掌握游戏玩法和故事的整体节奏。我们可以看到游戏节奏何时变得缓慢或过快,并能够做出相应的调整。至关重要的是,我们还清楚地知道还有多少工作要做。查看需要完成的任务列表是一回事,但通关一个基本空白的关卡,想象需要构建哪些内容来填充有趣的事件,则是另一回事。

Being able to play through the game from start to finish at alpha—even if chunks of it were only there in rudimentary form and playing through was more like running through—we were able to get a good and early handle on the overall pacing of the game’s play and story. We could see when the game’s pace got bogged down or sped along too quickly and were able to make adjustments accordingly. Crucially, we also got an excellent sense of how much work we had left to do. It’s one thing to look at a list of tasks that need doing, but it’s quite another to run through a largely empty level, visualizing what needs to be built to fill it up with playful events.

在决定删减或更改哪些内容时,请务必更新游戏设计宏图,以便在做出决定时进行跟踪。制作一份正在进行中的宏图副本,然后对其进行删减,以缩小游戏范围并重新安排内容,使游戏仍然有效,这是尝试并最终确定这些重要决定的好方法。自《神秘海域 2》以来,我在制作的每一款游戏中都使用了这种完整的 alpha 游戏序列方法,非常有效,可以帮助开发人员尽早了解他们是否应该进一步扩大项目范围。

As you decide what to cut or change, make sure to update your game design macro chart to keep track of your decisions as you make them. Making a work-in-progress copy of the macro chart and chopping it about to reduce the game’s scope and rearrange things so that the game still works is a great way of trying out and then finalizing these important decisions. I’ve used this game sequence complete at alpha approach on every game I’ve worked on since Uncharted 2, and it works like a charm for helping developers gain an early understanding of whether they should scope their projects further.

此外,为了让一款游戏在 Alpha 阶段就被视为完整的游戏序列,所有前端、菜单和界面屏幕都应到位,至少应包含占位图和音频内容(包括徽标屏幕、开始屏幕、选项屏幕、暂停屏幕和保存/加载屏幕)。所有这些元素都应正确连接在一起,以便游戏测试人员可以像在完成的游戏中一样在游戏体验中从一个部分移动到另一个部分。介绍性徽标应引导至标题屏幕,标题屏幕应引导至游戏或选项屏幕,等等。

Additionally, in order for a game to be considered game sequence complete at alpha, all of the front end, menus, and interface screens should be in place, at least with placeholder art and audio content (including the logo screens, start screen, options screens, pause screens, and save/load screens). All of these elements should be connected together properly so that a playtester can move around the experience of the game from one part to another, just as they could in the finished game. The introductory logos should lead to the title screen, which should lead into the game or the options screen, and so on.

最后,任何动画过场动画、真人视频或其他属于游戏的线性资产都应该在 alpha 版本中到位,至少要有占位符版本或存根。(我们将在下一章中详细讨论这一点。)我们很容易过于专注于我们正在创建的游戏玩法,而忘记了围绕游戏运行的其他一切。但是,通过思考,比如说,你团队在 alpha 阶段的徽标屏幕,你会比你原本更了解完成游戏的现实。即使你只是用鼠标潦草的笑话徽标来代替你最终会拥有的漂亮的动画团队徽标,在那里放一个徽标也会帮助你更好地掌握你的范围。

And finally, any animated cutscenes, live action video, or other linear assets that belong in the game should be in place at alpha, at least with placeholder versions or stubs. (We’ll talk more about this in the next chapter.) It’s easy to become so focused on the gameplay we’re creating that we forget about everything else that wraps around the game to make it work. But by thinking about, say, your team’s logo screen at alpha, you come to a much greater understanding of the reality of finishing your game than you would otherwise have. Even if you just put in a mouse-scrawled joke logo to stand in for the beautiful animated team logo that you’ll eventually have, getting a logo in there will help you get a better handle on your scope.

Alpha 提供的良好入职培训流程

A Good Onboarding Sequence by Alpha

第一印象在生活中无处不在,而糟糕的第一印象可能很难改变。游戏的开场时刻为游戏奠定了基调,并塑造了我们对游戏体验的期望。

First impressions count for a lot everywhere in life, and bad first impressions can be hard to shake. The opening moments of a game set a tone for the game and shape our expectations about what it will be like to play.

数字游戏的开头通常必须教会新玩家如何玩游戏。从商店回家的路上兴奋地阅读游戏说明书的日子已经一去不复返了。今天,我们下载游戏并开始玩游戏,期望游戏的开头会欢迎我们并告诉我们需要知道的内容。

The beginning of a digital game typically has to teach new players how to play the game. The days of excitedly reading a game’s instruction booklet on the journey home from the store are long gone. Today, we download and dive into games, expecting that the beginning of the game will welcome us in and tell us what we need to know.

当你考虑如何让新玩家加入你的游戏时(这一过程称为“入门”),依赖玩家对其他电子游戏及其控制方案的已知信息是不明智的。游戏设计师了解与他们的游戏类似的游戏的控制方案很重要,但你的玩家可能玩过也可能没玩过这些游戏,我们希望将人们纳入其中,而不是将他们排除在外。

When you’re thinking about how to get a new player into your game—the process known as “onboarding”—it’s unwise to rely on what players already know about other videogames and their control schemes. It is important for game designers to know about the control schemes of games similar to theirs, but your players may or may not have played those games, and we want to include people rather than exclude them.

例如,也许你的玩家知道 WASD 鼠标,但一个有效的设计师会迎合那些不知道的人。关键是要设计一种既适合经验丰富的玩家适合完全初学者的控制方案,并且可以以一种愉快的方式学习。我们如何才能教会玩家控制我们的游戏并玩游戏而不会让他们感到无聊或困惑?

Maybe your players will know about WASD-mouse, for example, but an effective designer will cater to those who don’t. The key is to devise a control scheme that suits both seasoned players and complete beginners, and that can be learned in an enjoyable way. How can we teach players to control our games and to play them without boring them or confusing them?

以前,游戏的控制方式比现在少,在游戏开始时显示一个“控制屏幕”并标注每个按钮的作用就足够了。如果控制屏幕位于菜单中的某个位置以供参考,那么它就很好;也许对于那些离开游戏一段时间并需要重温记忆的玩家来说。但对于大多数人来说,这不是一种好的学习方式,除非游戏的控制方案非常简单。即使是具有中等复杂控制方案的游戏也需要更好的方法来向玩家传授其控制方式。

At one time, when games had fewer controls than they do today, it was considered enough just to show a “controls screen” at the beginning of the game with callouts showing which buttons do what. Controls screens are good if they’re somewhere in a menu for reference; maybe for a player who has spent some time away from a game and needs a memory refresher. But for most people, this isn’t a good way to learn, unless the game’s control scheme is very simple. Games with even moderately complex control schemes require a better approach for teaching their controls to the player.

教导玩家更有效的方法是让玩家进入游戏,并逐一介绍游戏的控制和机制。在介绍每个新机制时,我们会提示玩家使用相关控制,然后向他们展示游戏世界中可以使用新机制解决的情况。这样,玩家就可以在实践中体验式地学习。

A more effective approach to teaching players is to put the player into the game and to introduce the game’s controls and mechanics one by one. As each new mechanic is introduced, we prompt the player to use the associated control, and then present them with a situation in the game world that they can get through by using the new mechanic. This way, the player can learn experientially, by doing.

在 20 世纪 90 年代和 21 世纪初,这种玩家训练通常以教程级别的形式呈现。但是,完成游戏设计师为你布置的繁琐步骤可能会非常乏味。设计师很快意识到,玩家不想在正常玩游戏之前必须做一些感觉像工作的事情- 他们只想开始玩游戏。今天,我们仍然有游戏教程,但其中最好的教程已不复存在。相反,设计师会不遗余力地将互动性与令人愉快、有趣、搞笑或戏剧性的内容结合起来,使他们的教程感觉像在玩游戏。优秀的游戏教程可以让玩家从游戏一开始就自由地玩,似乎自己在发现有趣的东西,同时学习设计师希望他们学到的东西。

In the 1990s and early 2000s, this kind of player-training was often presented in the form of a tutorial level. But jumping through hoops that a game designer has laid out for you can be tedious. Designers soon realized that players don’t want to have to do something that feels like work before they can play the game properly—they just want to start playing. Today, we still have game tutorials, but the best of them are not recognizable as such. Instead, designers go to great lengths to make their tutorials feel like play, by combining interactivity with something enjoyable, entertaining, funny, or dramatic. A great game tutorial allows players to play freely from the very start of a game, seemingly making interesting discoveries for themselves, all the while learning what the designer wants them to learn.

我们在第 18 章中讨论过的《超级马里奥兄弟1-1 世界》开头的设置非常优雅地做到了这一点。我们在第 17 章中讨论过的《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》中的开场火车车厢序列也做了同样的事情,将教程包裹在电影动作、戏剧和惊喜之中,同时也设置了故事情节并培养了玩家对游戏角色 Nathan Drake 的同理心。

The setup at the beginning of Super Mario Bros. World 1–1, which we discussed in chapter 18, does this very elegantly. The opening train car sequence in Uncharted 2: Among Thieves that we talked about in chapter 17 does the same thing, wrapping a tutorial in cinematic action, drama, and surprises, while also setting up the story and building empathy for Nathan Drake, the game’s player-character.

几乎每种风格的每款游戏都有机会通过以玩家可以通过好奇心和实验学习的方式呈现游戏机制来吸引玩家。如果游戏设计师能够同时娱乐玩家并吸引玩家,这将大有裨益。此时,最好考虑一下游戏的可供性和标志,我们在第 12 章中讨论过这一点。您的游戏是否仅通过外观和声音就提供了如何与之互动的线索?可以添加哪些内容来使这些线索更容易理解?

Most every game in every style has the opportunity to onboard its players by presenting its game mechanics in such a way that players can learn through curiosity and experimentation. It helps if the game’s designers are working to entertain and interest the player at the same time. This is a time when it’s good to think about the affordances and signifiers of your game, which we discussed in chapter 12. Does your game give clues about how to interact with it, just by the way it looks and sounds? What could be added to make those clues easier to read?

并非每款游戏都需要流畅的入门体验。Minecraft在早期很难学,除非有朋友教你如何玩,但这并没有阻止它取得巨大成功。难以掌握可能是游戏美学或文化的一部分。但要小心不要忽视游戏的教程。吸引并留住新玩家的注意力很难做到,对于寻求商业成功的游戏来说,这一点至关重要。

Not every game needs a smooth onboarding. Minecraft was, early in its lifetime, hard to learn without having a friend show you how to play, which didn’t prevent it from becoming a huge success. Being difficult to get to grips with might be part of a game’s aesthetic or culture. But be careful about neglecting your game’s tutorialization. Getting and holding a new player’s attention is difficult to do and is crucial for games that seek to be a commercial success.

因此,alpha 里程碑是确保您为游戏入门顺序制定完善计划的最佳时机。如果您能在 alpha 阶段完成游戏的入门和教程顺序构建,那就更好了。如果您能在 alpha 阶段解决与创建良好入门顺序相关的难题,那么您就有时间和精力专注于 alpha 和 beta 阶段之间需要处理的其他所有事情。

So, the alpha milestone is the right time to make sure that you have a strong plan for your game’s onboarding sequence. It’s even better if you can finish building the onboarding and tutorialization sequence of your game by alpha. If you can solve the difficult problems associated with creating a good onboarding sequence by alpha, it will leave you the time and mental bandwidth to focus on everything else that needs to be taken care of between alpha and beta.

Alpha 里程碑的作用

The Role of the Alpha Milestone

我喜欢将 Alpha 视为冲刺阶段的第一阶段。就像构思阶段和预制作阶段一样,Alpha 里程碑要求我们对游戏范围做出一些决定,并更广泛地防止功能蔓延和范围蔓延。它也为我们提供了一个检查游戏健康状况的好时机。

I like to think of alpha as the first stage of the home stretch. Like the end of ideation and the end of preproduction, the alpha milestone requires us to make some decisions about the scope of our game and provides a defense against both feature creep and scope creep more generally. It also gives us a good moment to check in on the health of our game.

Alpha 范围界定

Scoping at Alpha

构思结束,我们通过选择一些项目目标,以非常笼统的方式限制了游戏的范围。然后在预生产结束我们通过以下更具体的方式限制了我们的范围:(a)创建垂直切片,展示我们游戏的某个部分是什么样的,以及(b)以游戏宏的形式展示我们游戏的计划。

At the end of ideation, we limited the scope of our game in a very general way, by choosing some project goals. Then at the end of preproduction we limited our scope in some more specific ways by (a) creating a vertical slice, which showed what a part of our game would be like, and (b) presenting a plan for our game in the form of a game macro.

阿尔法里程碑,大约一半或三分之二的路程全面生产我们正在对游戏的范围做出更多的决定,通过创建一个游戏版本功能齐全— 至少具有每个特征中的一个,并且游戏序列完成通过这样做,我们向自己和世界证明,我们现在更详细地了解我们的游戏是什么样的,以及它完成后会包含哪些内容。

At the alpha milestone, about half or two-thirds of the way through full production, we are making even more decisions about the scope of our game, by creating a version of the game that is feature complete—that has at least one of every feature, and that is game sequence complete. By doing this, we demonstrate both to ourselves and to the world that we now understand in greater detail what our game is like and what it’s going to include when it’s finished.

当我们在这里谈论范围时,我们谈论的是功能和内容。实际上有两种范围需要考虑:(1) 游戏的“可能性空间”,即玩游戏时可能发生的所有不同事情的抽象空间,以及 (2) 游戏的“内容足迹”,即游戏中的内容量。

When we talk about scope here, we’re talking about both features and content. There are really two kinds of scope under consideration: (1) the “possibility space” of the game, the abstract space of all of the different things that might happen when a game is played, and (2) its “content footprint,” the amount of content in the game.

请记住,游戏的可能性空间既包含好东西,也包含坏东西:有趣的游戏玩法、奇妙的突发情况和有趣的策略,以及游戏设计问题、内容问题和错误。每次将新功能添加到我们的游戏中时,都会带来一些好东西和一些坏东西。通过在 alpha 阶段划一条线,超过这条线我们将不再添加任何功能,我们朝着创建一款没有问题的游戏迈出了重要的一步。

Remember that a game’s possibility space contains both good and bad things: fun gameplay, wonderful emergent situations, and interesting strategies, along with game design problems, content problems, and bugs. Every time a new feature is added to our game it brings some of the good stuff and some of the bad. By drawing a line in the sand at alpha, beyond which we won’t add any more features, we take our next major step toward creating a game that is free of problems.

Alpha 测试还为我们提供了抵御内容蔓延(另一种范围蔓延)的机会。看起来我们似乎在 Alpha 测试之后还有一些时间来确定游戏内容的范围,因为我们在 Beta 里程碑之前不必完成内容。但实际上,Alpha 测试是我们最好的最后机会。如果我们在 Alpha 测试之后,即在游戏 Beta 阶段,在为 Beta 里程碑构建所有内容的同时,试图缩小游戏的范围,那么我们很可能会浪费时间构建我们不确定是否属于游戏的内容。

Alpha also gives us a chance to defend against content creep, another type of scope creep. It might seem like we have some time left after alpha to scope the content of our game, since we don’t have to be content complete until the beta milestone. But really, alpha is our best last chance. If we try to reduce the scope of the game after alpha, during the game’s beta phase, at the same time as we’re building all the content for the beta milestone, then we could well be wasting time building things that we’re not sure belong in the game.

因此,在 alpha 阶段构建具有所有功能和完整游戏序列的游戏,即使游戏序列的某些部分仅通过 blockmesh 和其他占位符插入(我们将在下一章进一步讨论)。仔细查看结果。决定要删除哪些内容。如果很难决定要删除哪些内容,请再次查看您在构思结束时设定的项目目标。它们将有助于做出关于范围的艰难最后决定。您可能痴迷于在游戏中添加某些功能或内容,但如果它不能实现您的项目目标并且您时间不多了,请将其删除。

So, build out your game with all its features and a complete game sequence at alpha, even if some parts of the game sequence are only stubbed in with blockmesh and other placeholders (as we’ll discuss further in the next chapter). Take a good look at the results. Decide what to cut. If it’s difficult to decide what to cut, take another look at the project goals that you set all the way back at the end of ideation. They will help to make those difficult last decisions about scope. You might be obsessed with getting some feature or a piece of content in your game, but if it doesn’t serve your project goals and you’re running out of time, cut it.

检查游戏健康状况

Checking In on Our Game’s Health

Alpha 里程碑是检查游戏整体健康状况的重要时刻。游戏有多少错误和未解决的设计问题?Alpha 也是记录任何性能问题的好时机。我们的帧速率是否足够高?我们的加载时间是否很长?

The alpha milestone is an important time to check in on the overall health of our game. How many bugs and outstanding design problems does it have? Alpha is also a good time to take note of any performance issues. Is our frame rate high enough? Are our load times long?

记录所有这些问题(无论是设计相关、错误相关还是性能相关)都很重要,因为所有这些问题都必须在 alpha 和最终“候选发布”里程碑之间的某个时间点得到解决。其中许多问题应该在 beta 阶段处理,这将占用我们实现内容的剩余时间。列出 alpha 阶段的未解决的问题将有助于我们做出明智的决定,确定是否需要进一步缩小项目范围。我们越早决定缩小 alpha 阶段的游戏范围,我们的游戏就会越好。我们越晚做出关于范围的决定,我们的最终游戏就可能越差。

It’s important to take note of all these problems, whether design-related, bug-related, or performance-related, because all these issues are going to have to be addressed at some point between alpha and the final “release candidate” milestone. Many of them should be dealt with by beta, which will eat up the time that we have left to implement content. Making a list of our outstanding problems at alpha will help us make smart decisions about whether we need to further reduce our project’s scope. The sooner we make decisions to reduce the scope of our game at alpha, the better our game will turn out. The later we leave the decision about scope, the worse our finished game is likely to be.

在 Alpha 阶段选择游戏名称

Choosing a Game Title at Alpha

您可能一直在进行重点测试,以获取有关游戏名称的反馈。alpha 里程碑是做出最终决定的好时机。选择标题后,立即在主要社交媒体平台上为您的游戏创建一个社交媒体帐户。标题本身可能已被占用,但通常的做法是将“游戏”或“游戏”字样放在游戏名称后面,以创建一个独特的社交媒体帐户名称。

You may have been running focus tests to get feedback about the title of your game. The alpha milestone is a good time to make a final decision. As soon as you’ve chosen a title, create a social media account for your game on whatever you think your main social media platform will be. The title on its own might already be taken, but a common convention is to put the words “game” or “the game” after the title of your game to create a unique social media account name.

根据你为游戏设想的受众,你需要找到合适的社交媒体渠道,因为不同的渠道有不同的受众。营销顾问兼南加州大学游戏学教授 Jim Huntley 建议游戏团队选择一个渠道,并将其作为社交媒体的平台。他告诉我,在多个渠道上开展社交媒体活动是可能的,但对于小团队来说,这会很累。(Jim 指出,有免费工具可以帮助你自动将内容从一个渠道转发到另一个渠道。)

Based on the audience that you’re imaging for your game, you want to find the right social media channel, since different channels have different audiences. Marketing consultant and USC Games professor Jim Huntley recommends that a game team should pick a single channel and make it their social media home. He told me that it’s possible to run a social media campaign on multiple channels, but it’s going to be exhausting for a small team. (Jim noted that there are free tools that will help you automatically repost content from one channel to another.)

但是,即使你已经为你的游戏创建了社交媒体账户,也不要马上在上面发布内容。根据项目的长度,现在吸引玩家关注你的游戏可能还为时过早。在游戏发布之前,你只能吸引玩家一段时间。现在,确保你保存并分类了你在制作游戏过程中所做的一切:未使用的早期概念图、粗糙或实验性动画的 GIF、没有成功的设计理念。当你与玩家互动时,所有这些都将成为你社交媒体上的绝佳内容。

However, even though you’ve made a social media account for your game, don’t post to it yet. Depending on the length of your project, it might be too early to gather your audience around your game. You can only hold an audience’s interest for so long before your game is released. For now, make sure you’re saving and categorizing everything that you work on in the course of making your game: early concept art that goes unused, GIFs of rough or experimental animations, design ideas that didn’t work out. All of these will make for excellent content for your social media presence later on, when you’re engaging with your audience.

总结 Alpha 里程碑

Summarizing the Alpha Milestone

总而言之,在 alpha 里程碑中,我们的游戏应该是:

In summary, at the alpha milestone, our game should be:

  • 功能齐全
  • Feature complete
  •   游戏的所有功能都应以某种形式实现。
  •   All of the functionality of the game should be in place in some form.
  •   对于强大的 alpha 来说,每个独特或有风险的特征组合都应该到位。
  •   For a strong alpha, every unique or risky combination of features should be in place.
  • 游戏序列完成
  • Game sequence complete
  •   如果游戏有级别,它们应该至少具有块网格占位符艺术和碰撞几何,让我们了解整个游戏的大小和范围。
  •   If the game has levels, they should all be in place with at least blockmesh placeholder art and collision geometry that gives us a sense of the size and scope of the overall game.
  •   前端、菜单和界面(包括徽标屏幕、开始屏幕、选项屏幕、暂停屏幕和保存/加载屏幕)应该到位,至少包含占位图和音频内容。
  •   The front end, menus, and interfaces (including the logo screens, start screen, options screens, pause screens, and save/load screens) should be in place, with at least placeholder art and audio content.
  •   任何动画过场动画的占位符版本或存根都应到位。
  •   Placeholder versions or stubs of any animated cutscenes should be in place.
  •   所有事物都应该在逻辑上连接在一起,并且我们应该能够以连续的方式玩或移动游戏的每个部分。
  •   Everything should be logically connected together, and we should be able to play or move through every part of the game in a continuous way.

游戏的图像和音频不必在 alpha 阶段就已完成,但我们应该在需要制作的每种不同类别中创建一些成品艺术和音频,以表明我们确实可以制作这些东西,并找出每种类型的东西需要多长时间才能制作完成。我们应该尝试在游戏中为每个主要元素获取占位符,为我们提供工作存根并帮助我们评估游戏的性能。在完整制作过程中构建游戏时,不要忽视音频和视觉效果!alpha 里程碑是评估音频设计和视觉效果的好时机,并确保您能够实际了解制作它们需要多长时间。

The graphics and audio of a game need not be final at alpha, but we should have created some finished art and audio in every different category of the things we need to make, to show that we can actually make that stuff, and to find out how long each type of thing takes to create. We should try to get placeholders in the game for every major element, giving us a stub to work from and to help us evaluate the game’s performance. Don’t neglect audio and visual effects as you build out your game during full production! The alpha milestone is a great time to evaluate your audio design and visual effects, and to make sure that you have a realistic picture of how long it takes to make them really good.

此外,我们还应该问自己:

In addition, we should ask ourselves:

  • 我们的游戏还存在多少尚未解决的游戏设计问题?
  • How many outstanding game design problems does our game have?
  • 我们的游戏有多少漏洞?
  • How buggy is our game?
  • 我们的游戏表现如何?
  • How good is our game’s performance?

如果我们这样做了,我们的游戏就制作得非常有效了。在下一个阶段,我们将完成所有粗略制作,从测试阶段走向测试里程碑。

If we do this, we have roughed in our game very effectively. The next stage of our process will see us complete everything that we have roughed in, as we travel through the beta phase to the beta milestone.

对于某些类型的游戏开发者来说,alpha 里程碑也是展望未来(超越当前项目)的好时机。如果您计划在这个项目之后继续进行其他项目,alpha 里程碑就是开始讨论下一步要做什么的好时机。

For certain types of game developer, the alpha milestone is also a good time to look ahead, beyond the end of your current project. If you plan to roll over into another project after this one, the alpha milestone is a good time to start talking about what you’re going to do next.

Alpha 的里程碑评审

The Milestone Review That Takes Place at Alpha

alpha 里程碑是与团队内部和外部人员进行里程碑评审的绝佳时机,可以使用我在第 20 章中描述的过程来获取有关项目状态的反馈。

The alpha milestone is an excellent time to hold a milestone review with people from inside and outside the team, to get feedback on the state of our project, using the process I described in chapter 20.

在 alpha 阶段进行的里程碑评审与预生产结束时进行的里程碑评审非常相似,只不过现在要评审的游戏更多了。对于大型制作,你必须决定如何以有效的方式展示你的游戏。也许里程碑评审会议会持续几天,这样有足够的时间去审视回顾游戏并深入讨论。对于较小的作品,比如为一个学期的课程制作的短游戏,只需回顾二十或三十分钟就足够了。

The milestone review that takes place at alpha is a lot like the one that occurs at the end of preproduction, except that now there is a lot more game to review. For large productions, you’ll have to decide how to present your game in an efficient way. Maybe the milestone review meeting will take place over several days, giving enough time to look at the game and discuss it deeply. For smaller productions, like the short games made for a single-semester class, a review of just twenty or thirty minutes is probably fine.

在里程碑评审会议上的简短介绍性演讲中,开发团队领导层应该准备好说:

In their short introductory presentation at the milestone review meeting, the development team leadership should be ready to say:

  • 他们认为谁是他们游戏的受众。现在他们对自己的游戏以及游戏测试者对游戏的反应有了更多的了解,他们可能已经完善了定位声明(参见第 7 章)。
  • Who they consider to be the audience for their game. They have probably refined their positioning statement (see chapter 7) now that they understand more about their game and how playtesters react to it.
  • 他们的项目进展如何(关于 alpha)。例如:
  • Where their project is at, regarding alpha. For example:
  •   他们在 alpha 阶段表现强劲,并且正在顺利进入 beta 阶段,其中的存根内容已经完全代表了游戏的各个功能部分。
  •   They hit alpha strongly and are well on the way to beta, with stub content that is fully representative of the functional parts of their game.
  •   他们立即进入了 alpha 阶段,并且完全满足了 alpha 要求,其存根内容代表了游戏的功能部分。
  •   They hit alpha right on, and exactly met the alpha requirements, with stub content that is representative of the functional parts of their game.
  •   他们已经达到了 alpha 阶段,但仍有大量的存根内容不能完全代表游戏的功能部分。
  •   They hit alpha, but have a lot of stub content that isn’t fully representative of the functional parts of their game.
  •   他们尚未达到 alpha 阶段,而且他们说缺少了什么才使他们无法达到 alpha 阶段。
  •   They’re not yet at alpha, and they say what is missing that is keeping them from being at alpha.
  • 该项目是否存在任何已知问题。
  • Whether there are any known issues with the project.
  • 从里程碑评审小组获得什么样的反馈会很有用。
  • What kind of feedback would be useful to receive from the milestone review group.

在 alpha 里程碑中,我们应谨慎及时地给出注释。在大多数情况下,审核小组应避免给出建议添加新功能的注释,因为游戏现在功能齐全。

At the alpha milestone, we should be careful to give notes that are timely. The review group should—under most circumstances—avoid giving notes that recommend the addition of new features, since the game is now feature complete.

除了与团队外部人员举行里程碑评审会议外,团队还应在 alpha 阶段进行内部评审。内部评审应包括学科小组,其中艺术家负责审查艺术,工程师负责考虑工程问题,等等。它还应包括一些跨学科小组。在一​​个大型团队中,每个学科的负责人都会聚在一起讨论 alpha 版本。

In addition to a milestone review meeting with people from outside the team, the team should also have an internal review at alpha. The internal review should include discipline groups, where the artists look at the art, the engineers consider engineering issues, and so on. It should also include some cross-disciplinary groups. On a large team, the leads of each discipline would come together to discuss the alpha build.

有时,在 alpha 测试中,添加或更改一个简单的功能将对游戏产生革命性的积极影响。您必须决定在 alpha 测试后添加单个功能是否代表 (a) 对您的游戏进行安全、合理、积极的改变,或者 (b) 您是否会成为功能蔓延的牺牲品,并损害游戏的完整性和质量,以及团队的健康和生产力。

Occasionally it becomes apparent at alpha that the addition or change of a single, simple feature will have a revolutionary and positive impact on the game. You’ll have to decide whether the addition of a single feature after alpha represents (a) a safe, sane, positive change for your game, or whether (b) you are falling prey to feature creep, and doing damage to the integrity and quality of your game, and to the health and productivity of your team.

充分利用 alpha 里程碑评审会议,它可能是整个项目生命周期中最及时、可操作的笔记来源。游戏内容尚未完成,我们仍然有很大的机会根据游戏测试员、同行和导师提供的设计建议,将其塑造得更加出色。

Take full advantage of the alpha milestone review meeting as perhaps the richest source of timely and actionable notes in the whole lifetime of the project. The game is not yet content complete, and we still have a great opportunity to shape it toward excellence, by acting on the design advice that we receive from our playtesters, peers, and mentors.

有些人认为 Beta 版是判断一款游戏是否成功的里程碑,但我认为 Alpha 版可以让我们清楚地了解游戏的发展前景。结果。致力于达到 alpha 目标有助于我们在项目中期投入努力,而不是在最后堆积更艰巨的工作。

Some people judge beta as the milestone when you can tell if a game has come together, but I think that alpha gives us a very strong indication of how our game is going to turn out. Committing to hitting alpha well helps us to put in effort in the middle of the project, instead of stacking up the harder work at the end.

因此,请热切而积极地飞向 Alpha 里程碑,您会发现它是将游戏制作置于您的控制之下的最佳工具之一,同时保持对工作的乐趣。记住我在第 22 章中对 Alpha 的“技术排练”类比。剧院技术排练可以很有趣——如果演员错过了他们的提示,如果音效太大,或者烟雾机完全将礼堂充满雾气,这些都无关紧要。在技术排练中,您可以感受到首映之夜将出现的艺术品的潜力和兴奋。享受您的 Alpha 里程碑,让它成为您的朋友,并庆祝它。享受出现的粗糙和准备好的游戏,并寻找它所包含的卓越之处。

So, fly at your alpha milestone keenly and eagerly, and you will find it to be one of the best tools for bringing your game’s production under your control, while keeping a playful approach to your work. Remember my “technical rehearsal” analogy for alpha from chapter 22. A theater tech rehearsal can be a lot of fun—it doesn’t matter much if the actors miss their cues, if the sound effects are too loud, or if the fog machine completely fills the auditorium with fog. At the tech rehearsal you can sense the potential and the excitement of the artwork that will appear on opening night. Relish your alpha milestone, make it your friend, and celebrate it. Enjoy playing the rough and ready game that appears, and seek out the excellence that it contains.

 

 

29 插入存根

29    Stubbing Things In

“插入”功能和内容的概念可以帮助我们以最佳方式达到 alpha 里程碑,并且在整个游戏开发过程中都很有用。当我们将某些内容插入到游戏中时,我们可能会偏离本书中使用的同心开发原则,但我们会坚持健康的游戏设计实践所特有的功能和模块化。

The concept of “stubbing in” features and content can help us reach the alpha milestone in the best possible style and can be useful throughout the whole course of a game’s development. When we stub something into a game, we might move away from the principles of concentric development that we’ve used throughout this book, but we hold on to the functionality and modularity that characterize healthy game design practice.

什么是存根 (Stub)?

What Is a Stub?

存根是一段简短的内容或代码,用于代替稍后完成的内容。对于我们中的许多人来说,第一次遇到存根的地方是在维基百科上,我们可能会看到标签“这篇文章是存根。您可以通过扩展它来帮助维基百科。”它只包含最低限度的信息,“太短,无法提供某个主题的百科全书式覆盖”,但现在可以建立指向它和来自它的链接。1

A stub is a short piece of content or code that stands in for something that will be completed later. For many of us, the first place we encounter a stub is on Wikipedia, where we might see the label, “This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.” It’s put in place with just a bare minimum of information, “too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject,” but now links can be established leading to it and from it.1

程序员在编写函数和方法时,通常会先创建一个存根,如图29.1所示。存根具有完成的函数的正确名称,并且可以被代码的其他部分调用,但它只包含一个简单的占位符:可能只是一条注释,用“伪代码”描述函数最终将执行的操作,或者一条打印语句,在调试控制台中确认存根函数已被成功调用。

Programmers often write functions and methods by creating a stub first, like the one shown in figure 29.1. The stub has the correct name that the finished function will have and can be called by other parts of the code, but it only contains a simple placeholder: perhaps just a comment that describes in “pseudocode” what the function will eventually do, or a print statement that confirms in the debug console that the stub function has been successfully called.

图 29.1

Figure 29.1

存根函数。

A stub function.

电子游戏中的存根

Stubs in Videogames

在构建游戏时,我们可以使用存根的概念,让生活更轻松,工作更高效。在第 10 章讨论 blockmesh(也称为白盒、灰盒或 blockout 关卡设计)时,我们已经讨论过某种类型的存根。Blockmesh 是一种存根:它是一个占位符,为我们提供了创建复杂内容的第一步——在本例中,就是我们的成品关卡设计和关卡艺术。Blockmesh 为我们提供了可见的低多边形几何图形,游戏中的实体可以与之发生碰撞,我们稍后会将其细化为更详细的东西,无论是功能上还是美观上。

We can use the concept of stubs when we’re building games to make life easier and to work more efficiently. We already discussed a certain type of stub back in chapter 10 when we talked about blockmesh, also known as whitebox, graybox, or blockout level design. Blockmesh is a type of stub: it is a placeholder that gives us the first simple step on the road to the creation of something complex—in this case, our finished level designs and level art. Blockmesh gives us low-polygon geometry that we can see and that the entities in our game can collide with, which we will later refine into something more detailed, both functionally and aesthetically.

正如 blockmesh 是我们游戏中新关卡的开始一样,我们可以使用存根开始构建任何新对象或角色,并创建涉及新实体的关系。钢门可以以灰盒的形式开始;一棵树可以以巨大的绿色球体的形式开始,栖息在一个狭窄的棕色圆柱体上。游戏中的角色可能以胶囊状物体的形式开始,尽管它们最终可能看起来像獾或蛇怪。

Just as blockmesh is the beginning of a new level in our game, we can use a stub to begin building any new object or character and to create relationships that involve the new entity. A steel door could start out as a graybox; a tree could be stubbed in as a large green sphere perched on top of a narrow brown cylinder. The characters in a game might begin life as capsule-shaped objects, even though they might eventually end up looking like badgers or basilisks.

电子游戏中的其他实体类型也可以插入。对象的文本描述可以以“lorem ipsum”占位符开始。在顽皮狗,我们有一个简短的视频,我们会将其用作预渲染过场动画的存根,将其作为游戏流程中尚未制作的过场动画的占位符。这使我们能够更早地了解加载时间,并使稍后更容易放入完成的过场动画。界面可以使用占位符艺术和简化的交互插入,以便您选择选项并访问保存菜单,但不会具有界面最终将具有的任何精细度。

Other types of entity in a videogame can be stubbed in too. A text description of an object could start out as a “lorem ipsum” placeholder. At Naughty Dog we had a short video that we’d use as a stub for prerendered cutscenes, hooking it up as a placeholder in the game flow for cutscenes that we hadn’t made yet. This allowed us to understand our load times earlier and made it easier to drop the finished cutscenes in later. Interfaces can be stubbed in with placeholder art and simplified interaction to let you select options and access the save menu, but without any of the finesse that the interface will eventually have.

当一款游戏接近 alpha 里程碑时,玩家角色和游戏中的关键人物、物体和关卡等重要实体可能已经完成,并且已经达到相当高的水平。但是随着 alpha 的临近,我们现在必须考虑游戏中将要出现的所有其他实体:开关和门、桌子和椅子、金币和秘密信件。我们不必在 alpha 阶段就让所有这些不同的实体都处于完成状态 - 这将在稍后的 beta 里程碑中实现,届时游戏内容将完成。我们在 alpha 阶段必须拥有的是游戏的所有功能 - 我们必须拥有完整的功能 - 而存根可以帮助我们实现这一点。

When a game is getting close to its alpha milestone, important entities like the player-character and the key characters, objects, and levels in the game have probably been completed to a good level of polish already. But as alpha approaches, we now have to consider all the other entities that will go into the game: switches and doors, tables and chairs, gold coins and secret letters. We don’t have to have all of these different entities in a finished state by alpha—that will come later, for the beta milestone, when the game is content complete. What we do have to have in the game for alpha is all of the game’s features—we have to be feature complete—and stubs can help us achieve that.

存根对象进程示例

An Example Stub Object Process

让我们以门为例。门为我们提供了观察游戏开发许多方面的绝佳视角。它们看起来很简单,但在游戏设计中实际上非常复杂术语。Liz England 是一位游戏设计师,因《日落过载》《涂鸦冒险家》等游戏而闻名。在她富有洞察力和幽默感的文章《门的问题》中,Liz 用门的游戏设计复杂性来说明游戏设计师必须处理的问题。她问道:

Let’s take the example of a door. Doors give us a great lens for looking at many aspects of game development. They seem simple, but they’re actually very complex in game design terms. Liz England is a game designer known for her work on games like Sunset Overdrive and Scribblenauts. In her insightful and hilarious essay “The Door Problem,” Liz uses the game design complexities of doors to illustrate the kinds of issues that game designers have to deal with. She asks:

  • 门可以上锁或解锁吗?
  • Can doors be locked and unlocked?
  • 什么可以告诉玩家一扇门是锁着的并且可以打开,而不是一扇他们永远无法打开的门?
  • What tells a player a door is locked and will open, as opposed to a door that they will never open?
  • 玩家是否知道如何打开门锁?他们需要钥匙吗?如何破解控制台?如何解决谜题?如何等待故事情节过去?
  • Does a player know how to unlock a door? Do they need a key? To hack a console? To solve a puzzle? To wait until a story moment passes?
  • 是否存在可以打开但玩家永远无法进入的门?
  • Are there doors that can open but the player can never enter them?
  • 敌人从哪里来?他们从门里跑进来吗?那些门后来会锁上吗?2
  • Where do enemies come from? Do they run in from doors? Do those doors lock afterwards?2

我强烈建议你读一读《门的问题》。开发团队的每个成员都有很多关于门的问题需要回答。我们可以从为门建立一个存根开始回答这些问题。

I strongly recommend that you read “The Door Problem.” There are a lot of questions to be answered about doors for every member of the development team. We can start to answer those questions by building a stub for the door.

希望我们在 alpha 阶段至少制作了一扇看起来已完成的门,该门具有最终的艺术、动画、音频和触觉(控制器振动)。但是,假设我们需要一种特殊类型的门来作为我们游戏中的特殊门口——可能是城堡中的吊闸或以酷炫、复杂的方式打开的宇宙飞船门。如果它足够复杂,值得算作一个独特功能,我们应该在 alpha 阶段将这扇门放入游戏中。但是,如果我们的艺术家忙于为 alpha 阶段制作其他重要资产怎么办?这是一个制作存根的好时机。

Hopefully we’ve built at least one finished-looking door by alpha that has final art, animation, audio, and haptics (controller vibration). But let’s say that we need a special type of door for a special doorway in our game—maybe a portcullis in a castle or a spaceship door that opens in a cool, complicated way. We should get that door in the game by the alpha milestone if it’s complex enough that it warrants being counted as a unique feature. But what if our artists are too busy making other important assets for the alpha milestone? This is a good time to make a stub.

制作木桩时首先要考虑的是:这个物体占据了多大的体积?木桩越能明确物体的大小和形状,效果就越好。如果我们要制作一扇门,它要填满一个特定大小和形状的门道,并且知道门道的大小和形状,那么就让门完全适合门道,高度和宽度也完全合适。还要仔细选择门的厚度——是薄而易碎,还是厚而坚固?

The first consideration when making a stub is: what volume does this object occupy? The more definition that a stub can give to an object’s size and shape, the better. If we are making a door that fills a doorway of a certain size and shape, and if the doorway’s size and shape are known, then make the door fit the doorway exactly, with exactly the right height and width. Choose the door’s thickness carefully too—is it thin and fragile or thick and strong?

下一个需要考虑的问题是,您的短门将如何活动。它是向内打开还是向外打开?它是向上滑入天花板还是侧向滑入墙壁?它是单门还是双门?(见图29.2。)它是机械虹膜门吗?

The next consideration for your stub door is how it will animate. Does it open inward or outward? Does it slide up into the ceiling or sideways into the wall? Is it a single door or a double door? (See figure 29.2.) Is it a mechanical iris door?

图 29.2

Figure 29.2

电子游戏中的门具有多种不同的形状、大小和行为。

Doors in videogames come in many different shapes, sizes, and behaviors.

在考虑门的动画时,你应该计划避免门撞到周围可见的几何体上。“撞”这个术语来自计算机图形 (CG) 动画领域。当 CG 对象明显地相互穿透,体积重叠,而这在现实世界中是不可能实现的,则它们会撞到一起(图 29.3)。破坏我们从 CG 中获得的现实幻觉的最快方法之一是让本来应该是实体的物体观众对此非常敏感,即使 CG 角色的手部稍微位于其所拾取的 CG 对象内部,观众的视线也经常会直接看到 CG 角色的手部。

As you think about your door’s animation, you should plan to avoid your door crashing on the visible geometry around it. This term, crashing, comes from the world of computer graphics (CG) animation. CG objects are said to crash when they visibly interpenetrate each other, overlapping their volumes in a way that would be physically impossible in the real world (figure 29.3). One of the quickest ways to destroy the illusion of reality that we get from CG is to show objects that are meant to be solid going inside one another. People are very sensitive to this, and an audience’s eye often goes straight to the part of a CG character’s hand that is even slightly inside the CG object that it’s picking up.

图 29.3

Figure 29.3

看似坚固的物体“碰撞”(相互渗透)并迅速打破了物体坚固性和真实性的幻觉。图片来源:Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。

Solid-looking objects “crashing” (interpenetrating) and quickly breaking the illusion of the solidity and reality of the objects. Image credit: Mattie Rosen and Richard Lemarchand.

为了防止你的门残片(以及它将变成的成品门)撞到周围的艺术品上,请仔细考虑如何制作动画。如果你对 3D 建模工具有一点了解,你大概可以学会制作一个简单的动画。通过思考现实生活中门上的铰链的位置来选择门旋转的点,并让门围绕一个不会让它留在周围几何体内部的点旋转。你可以在图 29.4中看到一个示例。如果你在将门残片放入游戏中后立即做出这个设计决定,那么你将帮助创作成品艺术品和动画的人。

To prevent your stub door (and the finished door it will turn into) from crashing on the artwork around it, think carefully about how it’s going to animate. If you have even a little bit of skill with a 3D modeling tool, you can probably learn to make a simple animation. Choose the point that your door rotates around by thinking about where hinges are on doors in real life, and make the door rotate around a point that won’t leave it inside the geometry around it. You can see an example in figure 29.4. If you make this design decision as soon as you stub the door into the game, you will be helping whoever creates the finished art and animation.

图 29.4

Figure 29.4

仔细选择插入式门旋转的枢轴点,以避免发生碰撞问题。

Choose the pivot point that a stubbed-in door rotates around carefully to avoid problems with crashing.

精心制作的存根可以说是一种艺术形式。每个存根都像是成品游戏对象的幼苗,包含传达重要设计决策的机会。在工作过程中,可以考虑向对象添加一个简短的“自述文件”以说出你做出的哪些设计决策很重要,应该保留在最终成品中。我们越早做出每个关键设计决策,游戏创作过程中的一切就会越顺利、越高效,而且你的队友也知道他们何时拥有创作灵活性和自由度。

Thoughtful stub creation can be something of an art form. Each stub is like the seedling of a finished game object and contains an opportunity to communicate important design decisions. As you work, consider adding a short “readme” file to the object to say which of the design decisions you made are important and should be preserved in the finished object. The earlier that we can make each key design decision, the more smoothly and efficiently everything runs in the creation of our game, and it’s also good for your teammates to know when they have creative flexibility and freedom.

在为存根对象选择名称时,请记住,就像 Wikipedia 存根或存根函数一样,每个存根都不是替代品:它是对象本身。对对象的引用将保留到完成的游戏中,并且您以后不会替换整个对象,而只会替换对象的内容。永远不要将存根到游戏中的对象命名为“tempBigDoor”。只需将其命名为“bigDoor”。

When you’re choosing names for your stub objects, remember that, like a Wikipedia stub or a stub function, each stub is not a stand-in: it’s the object itself. The references to the object will be preserved into the finished game, and you will not replace the whole object later, just the contents of the object. Don’t ever name an object that you stub into your game something like “tempBigDoor.” Just name it “bigDoor.”

存根和功能

Stubs and Functionality

人们总是会问存根应该具有多少功能。这个问题的一个合理答案是:尽可能多地管理,但不要超过您可以快速创建的数量。如果存根就像对象的草图,那么它们也可以具有一些草图功能。

There’s always a question around how much functionality a stub should have. A decent answer to this question is: as much as you can manage, but no more than you can create quickly. If stubs are like sketches of objects, then they can have some sketched-in functionality as well.

关卡设计师在构建块状网格时经常使用颜色惯例。采用存根对象的颜色惯例有助于传达其形式和功能,即使存根对象目前还不能做很多事情。牢不可破的钢门可能是浅灰色,而可砸碎的石门可能是深灰色。当玩家角色穿过时会沙沙作响的低矮灌木丛可能由一簇绿色球体表示,并且目前没有碰撞。最终将具有详细模型和闪烁灯光的控制面板在其存根版本中可能只是一个红色盒子。

Level designers often use color conventions when building blockmesh. Adopting color conventions for stub objects can help to convey their form and function, even if the stub object doesn’t yet do much. An unbreakable steel door might be light gray, while a smashable stone door might be dark gray. Low bushes that will rustle as the player-character walks through them might be represented by clusters of green spheres and simply have no collision for now. A control panel that will eventually have a detailed model and flashing lights might just be a red box in its stub version.

简单的编码可以让你模拟出一种交互。一扇可砸碎的石门最终会碎成模拟物理的碎石块,现在你可以对它进行编码,让它在受到攻击时消失。

Simple coding can allow you to approximate an interaction. A smashable stone door that will eventually break apart into detailed chunks of physics-simulating rubble can be coded just to disappear when it’s attacked for now.

如果您可以制作一些简单的动画,甚至是对象的打开/关闭或开/关状态的两帧动画,那么您就可以在代码中挂钩。存根可以帮助在早期建立游戏中开关、门和其他对象之间的逻辑关系。尝试以模块化的方式设计您的内容和代码,这样您就可以在继续处理对象及其功能时轻松地进行添加和更改。

If you can do some simple animation, even two-frame animations for the open/closed or on/off states of objects, that will give you something to hook up in code. Stubs can aid in the early establishment of the logical relationships between switches, doors, and the other objects in the game. Try to design your content and code in a modular way, so that you can easily make additions and changes as you continue work on the objects and their functionality.

内容存根与同心开发

Stubbing in Content versus Concentric Development

正如我之前提到的,在 alpha 阶段插入实体来完善游戏功能标志着我们脱离了集中式开发。我们不再对游戏的每个部分进行打磨,直到它完美无缺后再进行下一步。现在,我们使用占位符快速将对象放入游戏中。这会带来哪些风险和好处?

As I mentioned earlier, stubbing in entities to make our game feature complete at alpha marks a move away from concentric development. We’re no longer polishing each part of the game until it shines before moving on to the next thing. Now we’re putting objects into the game quickly, using placeholders. What risks and benefits does this bring?

同心式开发在项目早期阶段最有帮助。请记住,我们使用同心式开发来帮助我们奠定游戏的基础。同心式开发让我们能够清楚地了解游戏中最基本、最重要和最独特的部分。然而,在每款游戏创作的某个阶段,我们现在已经知道了构建游戏其余部分所需的大部分知识,我们可以对剩下的工作更有信心。

Concentric development is most helpful in the early stages of a project. Remember, we use concentric development to help us lay the foundations of the game. Concentric development allows us to gain a clear understanding of the most basic, essential, and unique parts of our game. However, at some point in the creation of every game, we now know most everything we need to know to build out the rest of the game, and we can be more confident about the work that remains.

因此,随着我们全面投入生产,随着项目中未知数的减少以及我们努力实现 alpha 里程碑,我们逐渐在一段时间内脱离同心式开发,这是很自然的。当我们努力实现 beta 里程碑时,游戏将完成,我们将重新转向同心式开发。保持矛盾,例如同心式开发和游戏中存根之间的张力,是每项艺术创作实践的一部分,而游戏开发当然是一种艺术形式。当您尝试存根游戏所需的对象,并进一步了解如何制作出色的存根时,您将获得信心并胜任我们工艺的这一方面。

So it’s natural that as we progress through full production we gradually shift away from concentric development for a time, as the number of unknowns in our project decreases and as we work to hit the alpha milestone. We’ll move back toward concentric development as we work toward the beta milestone, when the game will be complete. Holding a contradiction, like the tension between concentric development and stubbing in the game, is a part of every artmaking practice, and game development is certainly an art form. As you experiment with stubbing in the objects that your game needs, and learn more about what makes an excellent stub, you’ll gain confidence and competence in this aspect of our craft.

  1. 1. “Stub”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia :Stub 。

  2. 1.  “Stub,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stub.

  3. 2.Liz England,《门的问题》,2014 年 4 月 21 日,http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/

  4. 2.  Liz England, “The Door Problem,” April 21, 2014, http://www.lizengland.com/blog/2014/04/the-door-problem/.

 

 

30 吸引玩家了解我们的游戏

30    Reaching the Audience for Our Game

Alpha 里程碑是检查我们所做的工作的好时机,这些工作最终将引导我们与游戏受众建立联系。我们在构思阶段就开始了这项工作,当时我们考虑了游戏的潜在受众。我鼓励您继续考虑您的受众,通过对游戏标题、关键艺术和徽标设计进行重点测试(在第 14 章的预生产期间,以及在您开始第 24 章的正式游戏测试过程时)。在第 28 章中,我们讨论了最终确定游戏名称以及如何确保社交媒体帐户的名称与游戏名称相匹配。

The alpha milestone is a great time to check in on the work we’ve been doing that will lead us eventually to connect with the audience for our game. We began this work in ideation, when we considered the possible audience for our game. I encouraged you to continue thinking about your audience by running focus tests for the title of your game, key art, and logo design (during preproduction in chapter 14, and as you began your formal playtesting process in chapter 24). In chapter 28, we talked about finalizing the title of our game and securing social media accounts with names that match our title.

在 Alpha 里程碑附近,我们应该采取更多措施,看看我们是否真的能找到受众并与他们交谈,希望他们愿意玩我们的游戏。从历史上看,游戏行业通过营销来实现这一点,在杂志、电视和互联网上投放游戏广告。今天,社交媒体为我们提供了接触受众的新机会。

Around the alpha milestone, we should take some more steps to see if we can actually find an audience and speak with them, in the hope that they will want to play our game. Historically, the game industry has done this using marketing, taking out commercials for games in magazines, on TV, and on the Internet. Today, social media gives us new opportunities to reach an audience.

我们需要制定一个具体的计划,说明如何为游戏受众创建和培育一个社区,然后将该计划付诸实施。在制定计划的早期,我们会考虑如何发布我们的游戏。我们通常会在 alpha 和 beta 里程碑之间某个时间公开我们的游戏,并在发布游戏视频预告片的同时发布公告,尽管对此没有硬性规定,我们稍后会看到。到 beta 版时,我们将有大量原创游戏玩法和内容可供展示,一个我们确信要使用的游戏标题,一个标题的徽标处理,以及一些在单个图像中代表游戏的关键艺术。

We need to make a concrete plan for how we’re going to create and nurture a community for the audience of our game, and then set that plan into action. Early in the development of our plan we will consider how we’re going to announce our game. It is typical to go public with our game sometime between the alpha and beta milestones, making an announcement alongside the release of a video trailer for the game, although there are no hard and fast rules about this, as we’ll see in a moment. By beta, we will have a good amount of original gameplay and content to show, a title for our game that we’re confident we want to use, a logo treatment for the title, and some key art that represents the game in a single image.

关于游戏发布和可供玩(无论是试玩版还是最终版)之间的间隔应该有多长,存在很多争论。从历史上看,游戏的营销活动可以持续长达一年甚至更长的时间。如今,人们在听说一款游戏后,往往迫不及待地想要尽快拿到它。正如营销顾问兼南加州大学游戏学教授吉姆·亨特利 (Jim Huntley) 所建议的那样:“你只能在有限的时间内维持消费者的兴趣。”

There is a lot of debate about how long the gap should be between when the game is announced and when it will be available to play, either in demo form or in its final version. Historically, games could sustain a marketing campaign of up to a year long or sometimes even more. Today, people are often impatient to get their hands on a game as soon as possible after they’ve heard about it. As marketing consultant and USC Games professor Jim Huntley advises: “You can only sustain consumer interest for so long.”

因此,如果我们还没有准备好在测试版中发布我们的游戏,我们可以等到准备好再发布。营销活动可以很快展开:Respawn Entertainment 的Apex Legends 的开发过程十分秘密,直到发布当天才公布。这款游戏取得了巨大的商业成功和口碑好评。

So, if we’re not ready to announce our game at beta, we can hold off until we are ready. A marketing campaign can unfold very quickly: Respawn Entertainment’s Apex Legends was developed in secrecy and was only announced on the day of its release. It went on to become an enormous commercial and critical success.

您必须决定游戏的营销活动时长:何时发布,以及如何在发布过程中与受众互动。正确的答案取决于游戏的具体情况以及您为游戏设想的受众,但我有一些简单的指导方针可以帮助您与对您的游戏感到兴奋的人们建立联系。

You’ll have to decide what the right length of marketing campaign is for your game: when to announce it, and how to engage with your audience on the road to release. The right answers will depend on the specifics of your game and the audience that you’ve imagined for it, but I have a few brief guidelines for you to help you connect with the people who are going to be excited about your game.

制定营销计划

Make a Marketing Plan

要开展有效的营销活动,您需要制定营销计划。在 Peter Zackariasson 和 Mikolaj Dymek 所著的《电子游戏营销:学生教科书》一书中,他们建议首先考虑游戏的“营销组合”——游戏产品、计划销售价格、计划销售地点以及促销方式:“计划中的广告、促销和公共关系”。1 通过询问营销组合中每个元素的“什么、为什么、何时、如何、多少和谁?”,您可以为 Peter 和 Mikolaj 所称的“世界上最短的营销计划”奠定基础。2

To run an effective marketing campaign, you need a marketing plan. In their book Video Game Marketing: A Student Textbook, Peter Zackariasson and Mikolaj Dymek recommend starting by considering the “marketing mix” for your game—your game as a product, the price you plan to sell it for, the places you plan to sell it, and the promotion you’ll use: the “advertising, sales promotion and public relations that are planned.”1 By asking “what, why, when, how, how much, and who?” for each element in the marketing mix, you can set the basis of what Peter and Mikolaj call “the World’s Shortest Marketing Plan.”2

思考一下游戏的个性和基调,它们会影响游戏的受众,并决定你的营销方式。你的游戏是严肃的还是搞笑的?是好玩的还是刺激的?再次参考你在第 7 章中设定的体验目标,这个目标可能随着时间的推移而不断完善。在《独立游戏营销实用指南》中,Joel Dreskin 建议你问自己:“我的游戏如何脱颖而出?”“通过从一开始就思考游戏可能具有的独特和引人注目的特征,你可以让游戏的营销过程变得容易得多。确定可能的吸引力,比如一种前所未有的有趣新游戏玩法、展示新硬件设备或功能的突破性机制、能够吸引玩家的高度风格化的视觉效果、有趣的中心人物、故事情节和设置。” 3

Think about the personality and tone of your game, which may affect who your game appeals to and will inform how you will market it. Is your game serious or silly? Is it playful or intense? Refer once again to the experience goal you set in chapter 7, which you may have refined over time. In A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing, Joel Dreskin recommends that you ask, “How will my game stand out?” “By thinking about possible unique and compelling characteristics for your game from the very beginning, you can make the process of marketing the game considerably easier. Identify possible hooks, such as a fun new approach to gameplay that’s never been done before, a breakthrough mechanic that showcases a new hardware device or features, highly stylized visuals that will grab players, interesting central characters, storylines and setting.”3

制定一个好的营销计划还有很多事情要做;请参阅我刚才提到的书籍,并在线搜索以找到详细的建议,帮助您制定适合您的游戏的营销计划。

There’s much more to devising a good marketing plan; refer to the books I just mentioned and search online to find detailed advice that will help you make a marketing plan that is appropriate for your game.

为你的游戏创建网站和新闻资料包,并联系媒体

Make a Website and Press Kit for Your Game, and Contact the Press

您的游戏如果能在互联网上拥有一个永久的主页,人们可以在这里了解更多信息,这将对您的游戏大有裨益。您网站的主页应该突出显示游戏的视频预告片,以便访问者可以立即看到游戏的实际效果。它应该突出您的游戏名称、开发团队、平台以及购买或下载地点。您一直在研究的关键艺术和徽标设计将在您构建网站时派上用场。添加有关游戏的其他重要信息,例如发布日期和社交媒体链接,但不要用太多信息让访问者不知所措。根据需要将内容分成网站的不同子部分。

Your game will benefit from having a permanent home on the Internet where people can go to find out more about it. The main page of your website should prominently feature a video trailer of your game so visitors can immediately see the game in action. It should highlight your game’s title, development team, platform(s), and where to buy or download it. The key art and logo design that you’ve been working on will come in handy as you build your website. Add other important information about the game, such as the release date and links to your social media presences, but don’t overwhelm your visitors with too much information. Break things out into different subsections of the site, as appropriate.

专业团队还应为其游戏创建新闻资料包,这是一个网站,展示记者将用来撰写有关您和您的游戏的引人入胜的故事的材料。这将包括有关您的游戏和您的团队的信息,包括您的位置、历史和业务联系方式。它将包含您的游戏的静态图像和视频、您的关键艺术、徽标设计和团队的新闻质量照片。“presskit()”是一款免费工具,由游戏开发者 Rami Ismail 和一群合作者创建,旨在帮助游戏团队创建新闻资料包网站。4

Professional teams should also create a press kit for their game, which is a website presenting the materials that journalists will use to create compelling stories about you and your game. This will include information about both your game and your team, including your location, history, and business contact details. It will contain still images and videos of your game, your key art, logo designs, and press-quality photographs of the team. “presskit()” is a free tool, created by game developer Rami Ismail and a group of collaborators, designed to help game teams create press kit websites.4

制作网站和新闻资料包后,您就可以开始联系媒体来宣传您的游戏了。与媒体合作属于 PR(公共关系)的范畴。在电子表格中建立并增加媒体联系人列表,您还可以在其中跟踪您联系过的人以及谁给您回信了。撰写一条简明、友好的消息,让您的联系人能够接受。正如 Emily Morganti 在 Joel Dreskin 的《独立游戏营销实用指南》中关于 PR 的客座章节中所说 “保持您的沟通重点突出,但也要像与另一个人交谈一样说话。试图使用正式的语言、使用大量流行语或过于可爱以吸引某人的注意力是被忽视的好方法。” 5(Emily 的章节充满了关于与媒体合作为您的游戏获得报道的极好建议。)

When you’ve made a website and a press kit, you’re ready to start reaching out to the press to spread the word about your game. Working with the press falls under the banner of PR (public relations). Build and grow a press list of contacts in a spreadsheet, where you can also keep track of who you’ve contacted and who wrote back to you. Craft a concise, friendly message that will be received well by your contacts. As Emily Morganti says in her guest chapter about PR in Joel Dreskin’s A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing, “Keep your communications focused and to the point, but also talk like you’re talking to another human being. Trying to be formal with your language, using a lot of buzzwords or being too cute in an attempt to grab someone’s attention is a great way to be ignored.”5 (Emily’s chapter is loaded with excellent advice about working with the press to get coverage for your game.)

通过介绍、评论宣传、重要公告或预览副本联系您的联系人,并进行跟进。公关需要坚持不懈,与媒体的关系必须随着时间的推移而发展。努力尊重您的媒体联系人并赢得他们的信任,您的游戏的好评就会传播开来。

Reach out to your contacts with introductions, review pitches, big announcements, or preview copies, and follow up. PR takes persistence, and relationships with the press have to be developed over time. Work to show respect to your press contacts and earn their trust, and the good word about your game will spread.

为你的游戏开展社交媒体活动

Running a Social Media Campaign for Your Game

仅仅在社交媒体上大肆宣传你的游戏是不够的:你必须有话要说。你将通过社交媒体讲述一个故事,这个故事将吸引那些将成为你的游戏玩家(也可能是付费玩家)的兴趣。

It’s not enough to just start hollering about your game on social media: you have to have something to say. You’re going to tell a story with your social media presence, and it’s that story that will draw the interest of the people who will make up the playing (and possibly paying) audience of your game.

当我向 Jim Huntley 询问有关开展社交媒体活动以及更广泛意义上的营销活动的建议时,他告诉我:“内容为王——与你的产品或品牌相关的内容越多越好。如果你有有内容就好,没有内容就难了,所以要保存和分类你的设计材料。”特别是要保存图片、电影、文档、音乐和声音。这些都将成为你社交媒体活动的资产。

When I asked Jim Huntley for his advice about running a social media campaign, and marketing campaigns more generally, he told me: “Content is king—the more you’ve got that’s relevant to your product or brand, the better. It’s easy when you’ve got the content, but it’s hard when you haven’t, so save and categorize your design materials.” In particular, save images, movies, documents, music, and sound. These will become assets in your social media campaign.

故事需要人物。对于游戏中的故事,人物就是游戏中的虚构角色。对于游戏制作的故事,我们可以选择:可以是开发者、社区经理、在游戏中扮演角色的演员,也可以是任何对游戏、游戏玩法以及制作过程有有趣见解的人。

A story needs characters. For the story in the game, those are the fictional characters in the game. For the story of the making of the game, we have a choice: it could be the developers, the community managers, the actors who play roles in the game, or anyone who has something interesting to say about the game, how it’s played, and what it took to make it.

Jim Huntley 告诉我,年纪较小的孩子会很乐意听游戏故事。他说年纪较大的观众也会对此感兴趣,但他们也会对引人入胜的游戏玩法描述和游戏制作故事感兴趣。他提到,将游戏内容放在任何“制作”内容之前非常重要。Jim 认为漫威电影宇宙电影在营销方面做得很好——在向你展示一些新内容后,它们会让你一窥创作者的思维过程。

Jim Huntley told me that audiences of younger children will respond well to being told the story of the game. He said that older audiences will be interested in that too, but will also be interested in engaging descriptions of the gameplay and in the story of the making of the game. He mentioned that it’s important to put the content of the game before any “making of” content. Jim thinks the Marvel Cinematic Universe films do a good job of this in their marketing—they give you a glimpse of the creator’s thought processes right after they’ve shown you some new content.

关于社交媒体使用的最佳实践发展非常迅速且在世界各地有所不同,你可以在本书的网站playfulproductionprocess.com上找到更多关于使用社交媒体的建议。

Best practices around social media use evolve very quickly and vary around the world, and you can find some more advice about engaging on social media on the website for this book, playfulproductionprocess.com.

正如吉姆·亨特利告诉我的那样,“不要开始得太早,除非你确定你能维持对话。我见过有人开始得太晚,但这是可以克服的缺点。与你的观众互动——尤其是那些早期参与的观众。给他们分享的东西,或者独家的东西。像朋友一样与你的粉丝互动。只要你对他们诚实,向他们展示让他们兴奋的东西,那就是一个好地方。永远不要把他们视为理所当然。”

As Jim Huntley told me, “Don’t start too early, unless you’re sure that you can sustain the dialogue. I’ve seen people start late, but that’s a sin that can be overcome. Engage with your audience—especially those that engage early. Give them stuff to share, or exclusive stuff. Engage with your fans like a friend. As long as you’re honest with them, and show them stuff that gets them excited, that’s a good place to be. Never, ever take them for granted.”

与社交媒体影响者合作

Working with Social Media Influencers

社交媒体影响者(也称为内容创建者、主播或 YouTube 用户)可以在您为游戏寻找受众的过程中发挥重要作用。直播游戏过程的影响者可以帮助游戏找到受众,这种方式可能比当今世界上任何其他方式都更有效。

Social media influencers—also called content creators, streamers, or YouTubers—can play an important role as you work to find the audience for your game. Influencers who stream their gameplay sessions can help a game find its audience in a way that is perhaps more effective than any other in the world today.

如果您能联系到有影响力的人或他们的经理,了解他们是否对您的游戏感兴趣,他们最终可能会向他们的受众展示您的游戏,并可能对其赞不绝口。由于有影响力的人通常拥有庞大的受众群体(从数千人到数百万人不等),因此联系他们可能是一件碰运气的事情。也许您的电子邮件或直接消息会进入他们的视线,或者您可能会淹没在他们收到的大量信息中。使用您的公关技巧来提高您的消息得到回复的机会。

If you can reach an influencer or their manager to see if they’re interested in your game, they might end up showing it to their audience and may say good things about it. Because influencers often have huge audiences—ranging in size from thousands to millions of people—reaching them can be a hit-or-miss business. Maybe your email or direct message will make its way onto their radar—or maybe you’ll get lost in the deluge of communication they receive. Use your PR skills to improve your chances of getting a reply to your messages.

保持有趣且信息丰富的社交媒体形象,在交流中保持尊重、专业和友好的态度,你将为有影响力的人在意识到你的游戏时想要关注你的游戏创造初始条件。

Maintain an entertaining and informative social media presence, stay respectful, professional, and friendly in your communications, and you’ll be setting up the initial conditions for an influencer to want to pay some attention to your game when they become aware of it.

将游戏开发与专业营销相结合

Integrating Game Development with Professional Marketing

如果您有机会与专业营销人员合作,无论他们是您发行商的营销团队还是您聘请来帮助您开展业务的创意营销公司,请尽早并经常与他们交流。如果可以,请在确定项目目标后立即开始讨论,然后在整个开发过程中保持联系。向他们展示游戏并告诉他们您认为游戏的发展方向。通过征求他们的意见,邀请他们参与您的创作过程。他们会有很棒的想法,一个小想法可能会彻底改变您的游戏成功的机会。

If you have the opportunity to work with professional marketers, whether they’re the marketing team at your publisher or a creative marketing company that you hire to help you, talk to each other early and often. If you can, start the discussion as soon as you have your project goals, and then stay in touch throughout development. Show them the game and tell them where you think it’s headed. Invite them into your creative process by seeking their input. They will have great ideas, and one small idea might revolutionize the opportunities for success that your game has.

正如吉姆·亨特利告诉我的那样,“我喜欢开发人员在‘水泥干透’之前询问我的意见,他们让我参与到整个过程中,听取我的意见,看看我的想法。作为一名营销人员,我喜欢成为创意过程的一部分,并感觉我的意见受到重视。”请记住,在你做的每一件事中,如果你尊重你的合作者并与他们建立信任,那么好事就会随之而来。

As Jim Huntley told me, “I like when a developer asks my opinion before the ‘cement has dried,’ when they bring me into the process to get my opinion and see what I think. As a marketer, I like being a part of the creative process and feeling that my opinion is valued.” Remember, in everything you do, if you show respect to your collaborators and build trust with them, good things will follow.

本章只是对一个庞大而重要的主题进行了非常简短的概述。您可以在Peter Zackariasson 和 Mikolaj Dymek 合著的《电子游戏营销:学生教科书》和 Joel Dreskin 合著的《独立游戏营销实用指南》中了解更多内容。在资源允许的范围内,向营销和公关专业人士寻求帮助。我们将在第 35 章再次讨论这些主题。

This chapter has given you just a very brief overview of a huge and important topic. You can learn more in Video Game Marketing: A Student Textbook by Peter Zackariasson and Mikolaj Dymek and A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing by Joel Dreskin. Seek out assistance from marketing and PR professionals, to whatever extent your resources make possible. We’ll return to these subjects again in chapter 35.

我很早就意识到,游戏开发者和游戏营销人员必须找到良好合作的方式。我们都是同一个创意行业的一部分,致力于制作出色的游戏,并将它们交到喜欢它们的玩家手中。艾米·亨尼格 (Amy Hennig) 曾向我指出,游戏总监对打造玩家游戏体验的责任应该从玩家第一次了解游戏的那一刻开始。这通常是当玩家看到图像、阅读一些文字或观看作为促销活动或新闻活动一部分的视频时。这使得游戏团队及其营销和销售合作伙伴密切而有效地合作变得更加重要。

I realized early that it is essential that game developers and game marketing professionals find ways to work well together. We are all part of the same creative industry, seeking to make great games and get them into the hands of players who will enjoy them. Amy Hennig once pointed out to me that a game director’s responsibility for crafting the player’s experience of their game should begin the moment that person first becomes aware of the game. That is usually when the player sees an image, reads some text, or sees a video as part of a promotional campaign or press event. That makes it even more important that a game team and their partners in marketing and sales are collaborating closely and effectively.

无论你如何努力吸引游戏的潜在受众,都要专注于你有机会为人们的生活带来真正的价值和真实的联系。发送的信息要清晰且引人入胜,在交流时要表现出尊重,并努力赢得人们的信任。无论你制作的是哪种类型的游戏,无论是商业游戏、艺术游戏、严肃游戏还是学术项目,世界上都有数百万人会喜欢和欣赏它。创造性地思考如何吸引他们,然后做好后续工作。

However you work to reach the potential audience for your game, stay focused on the idea that you have an opportunity to bring genuine value and authentic connection to people’s lives. Be clear and engaging in the messages that you send, show respect as you communicate, and work to earn people’s trust. Whatever type of game you’re making, be it a commercial game, an artistic game, a serious game, or an academic project, the chances are that there are millions of people out there in the world who will enjoy it and appreciate it. Think creatively about how to reach them, and then do the legwork that it takes to follow up.

  1. 1 . Zackariasson 和 Dymek,视频游戏营销,35。

  2. 1.  Zackariasson and Dymek, Video Game Marketing, 35.

  3. 2 . Zackariasson 和 Dymek,视频游戏营销,37。

  4. 2.  Zackariasson and Dymek, Video Game Marketing, 37.

  5. 3. Dreskin,《独立游戏营销实用指南》,37。

  6. 3.  Dreskin, A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing, 37.

  7. 4.Rami Ismail,Presskit(),2020 年 12 月 10 日访问,https://dopresskit.com/

  8. 4.  Rami Ismail, Presskit(), accessed December 10, 2020, https://dopresskit.com/.

  9. 5 . Dreskin,《独立游戏营销实用指南》,75。

  10. 5.  Dreskin, A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing, 75.

 

 

31 Beta 里程碑

31    The Beta Milestone

在我们的游戏制作流程中,beta里程碑标志着游戏项目beta阶段和整体完整制作阶段的结束(图 31.1)。

In our playful production process, the beta milestone marks the end of both the beta phase and the overall full production phase of a game project (figure 31.1).

图 31.1

Figure 31.1

测试里程碑结束了测试阶段和全面生产。图片来源:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。

The beta milestone ends both the beta phase and full production. Image credit: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, Mattie Rosen, and Richard Lemarchand.

Beta 版通常是一个具有挑战性的里程碑。在 Beta 版之前,我们必须对游戏的范围做出最后一轮可能很艰难的决定:包括什么以及删除什么。不过,达到 Beta 版里程碑是一项非常令人满意的成就,因为我们终于可以看到我们的游戏完成了,尽管还有一些瑕疵。

Beta is often a challenging milestone to hit. In the run-up to beta, we have to make a final round of potentially tough decisions about the scope of our game: what to include and what to cut. Reaching the beta milestone is a very satisfying accomplishment, though, because we can finally see our game in its completed state, albeit with some rough edges.

Beta 里程碑需要什么

What’s Needed for the Beta Milestone

在 alpha 阶段,我们完善了游戏功能和游戏序列。为了达到 beta 阶段的里程碑,我们现在还必须完善游戏内容。这使得 beta 阶段的里程碑比 alpha 阶段更容易描述,因为在 beta 阶段,游戏应该基本上已经完成,功能和内容都已完成。在最终候选发布阶段之前,我们将有机会完善、平衡和修复错误,但如果游戏中有什么事情发生,它应该在 beta 阶段就已出现。

At alpha, we made our game feature complete and game sequence complete. In order to reach the beta milestone, we must now also make our game content complete. This makes beta a much easier milestone to describe than alpha because at beta the game should essentially be finished, complete in both features and content. We’ll have a chance to polish, balance, and bug fix before our final release candidate milestone, but if something is going in the game, it should be in there at beta.

因此,在测试版中,游戏中的所有功能和内容都应至少达到第一阶段的完善水平,包括所有艺术、动画、音效、音乐、视觉效果和触觉效果(控制器振动)。一切都已完成足够让你在必要时随游戏一起发布,即使你希望花些时间让它变得更好。这个概念可能很重要,因为在测试里程碑中,我们通常会尽可能快速高效地将内容放入游戏中以达到里程碑。请记住,除非我们有很长的后期制作期,否则通常情况下,测试版中的内容越粗糙,最终的游戏就越粗糙。通常最好在测试之前删减你能删减的内容,留出更多时间来完善游戏中的所有内容。

So, at beta, all of the features and content that will be in the game should be in place to at least a first-pass level of polish, including all of the art, animation, audio effects, music, visual effects, and haptic effects (controller vibration). Everything is finished enough that you could ship with it if you had to, even though you’d like some time to make it better. This concept could be important, because at the beta milestone we’re often putting things into the game as quickly and efficiently as we can in order to hit the milestone. Bear in mind that unless we have a long postproduction period, it’s typically the case that the rougher things are at beta, the rougher the final game will be. It’s generally better to cut what you can before beta and leave yourself more time to polish everything that makes it into the game.

在测试阶段,关卡布局、代表关卡和界面屏幕的最终艺术图应该全部完成,我们应该能够顺利通关。我们的游戏入门流程(用于指导新玩家玩游戏)应该是完整的。游戏的结局(如果游戏有结局)应该到位,并按照预期进行。如果游戏是开放式结局,比如模拟游戏或沙盒游戏,我们应该能够无限期地玩下去,同样不会遇到任何重大问题。

At beta, the level layout and final art representing the levels and interface screens should all be done, and we should be able to play through the game without any major problems. Our game’s onboarding sequence, which teaches new players to play, should be complete. The end of the game (if the game has an end) should be in place and doing whatever it’s meant to do. If the game is open-ended, like a sim or a sandbox game, we should be able to play it indefinitely, again without any major problems.

在测试版中,应创建游戏可执行文件或应用程序使用的图标(根据需要的大小),并确定图标附带的文本。如果游戏运行时将使用游戏前启动器对话窗口,则应在测试版中确定启动器的文本和设置,并创建启动器所需的任何启动画面图像。如果游戏将通过在线商店分发,则游戏在线商店所需的任何图像通常都在测试版中创建。如果游戏要使用成就系统(无论是游戏内还是与游戏发行商或平台持有者提供的成就系统相连),则成就系统的系统和内容必须在测试版中完成。

At beta, the icons used by the game’s executable or app should be created, in as many sizes as are needed, and the text accompanying the icon should be finalized. If the game will use a pre-game launcher dialogue window when it runs, the text and settings of the launcher should be finalized at beta, and any splash screen images needed for the launcher should be created. If the game will be distributed via an online store, any images required for the game’s online store presence are usually created by beta. If the game is going to use an achievements system, either in-game or connected to the achievements system provided by a game publisher or platform holder, then the systems and content for the achievements system must be completed by beta.

如果您要在游戏中添加任何复活节彩蛋(为玩家准备的隐藏惊喜),则必须在测试版之前将其呈现,并应通知团队领导和 QA 部门。惊喜和秘密对玩家来说很棒,但不要在没有让每个人都参与进来的情况下在游戏中隐藏任何东西,以避免与版权问题和诽谤责任等所有问题相关的不良情况。

If you are going to put any Easter eggs (hidden surprises for the player) in your game, they must be present by beta, and the team’s leadership and QA department should be notified of their presence. Surprises and secrets are great for players, but don’t hide things in your game without getting everyone responsible on board, in order to avoid bad situations related to everything from copyright problems to defamation liability.

如果游戏必须通过认证流程才能在索尼、微软或任天堂等平台持有者制造的游戏机上或苹果生态系统的移动平台上发布,那么开发人员应该在 Beta 里程碑之前尽可能多地满足认证要求。您可以在第 34 章中阅读更多相关信息。

If the game will have to pass a certification process in order to be released on a game console made by a platform holder like Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo, or on a mobile platform in the Apple ecosystem, the developers should meet as many of the certification requirements as possible by the beta milestone. You can read more about this in chapter 34.

要完成的工作量非常大,对吧?您可能会惊讶于其中一些工作需要这么早完成,现在您可以明白为什么进入 Beta 版会如此具有挑战性。本章的其余部分将为您提供一些关于如何实现这一重要里程碑的建议。

That’s a huge amount of stuff to get finished, right? You might be surprised by how early some of these things have to be completed, and now you can see why hitting beta can be such a challenge. The rest of this chapter will give you some advice about reaching this important milestone.

完整性和 Beta 里程碑

Completeness and the Beta Milestone

《游戏设计研讨会:以游戏为中心的创新游戏创作方法》中,Tracy Fullerton 谈到了如何使用游戏测试来确保游戏功能齐全、完整,和平衡。1 Tracy讨论了检查游戏在规则和可能性空间方面是否“内部完整”,并谈到了查找和修复漏洞和死胡同。当然,这是我们在整个开发过程中都应该做的事情,但随着 beta 里程碑的临近,这是一个特别好的视角。

In Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games, Tracy Fullerton talks about using playtesting to make sure that a game is functional, complete, and balanced.1 Tracy discusses checking to see if a game is “internally complete” in its rules and possibility space, and talks about finding and fixing loopholes and dead ends. This is something we should do throughout the whole course of development, of course, but it’s a particularly good lens to apply as the beta milestone approaches.

漏洞,有时也被称为“漏洞”,是指游戏设计允许玩家比他们应该做的更轻松地实现某些目标。例如,如果在 Boss 战斗关卡中有一个随机位置,你可以站在那里,并且由于布局或机制的某些怪癖,Boss 无法对你造成任何伤害,但你可以伤害它,毫不费力或冒任何风险击败它:这就是漏洞。

Loopholes, sometimes known as “exploits,” occur when the design of the game allows the player to achieve something more easily than they should. For example, if there’s a random place in a boss fight level where you can stand and—because of some quirk of the layout or mechanics—the boss can’t deal you any damage but you can damage it, defeating it without any effort or risk: that’s an exploit.

有时,漏洞可以为游戏增添一些好处,而当漏洞需要相当的技巧时,它们对设计的危害就会小得多。碰撞中的故障可以让玩家走捷径通过关卡,这种现象深受电子游戏速通者的喜爱。电子竞技游戏中的意外可能性乍一看似乎是一种漏洞,但玩家社区可能会将其视为游戏的合法功能。也许你正在制作一款实验性艺术游戏,或者一款评论游戏漏洞的游戏,游戏中的漏洞是故意为之的。然而,对于大多数类型的游戏,尤其是那些涉及与游戏系统或其他玩家竞争的游戏,漏洞是需要从游戏设计中寻找和消除的东西。对这类问题做出判断是你作为游戏设计师的创造性角色的一部分。

On occasion, an exploit can add something good to a game, and exploits are less harmful to a design when they take significant skill to use. Glitches in collision that allow the player to take shortcuts through a level are beloved by videogame speedrunners. An unexpected possibility in an eSports game that at first seems like an exploit might be embraced by the player community as a legitimate feature of the game. Perhaps you’re making an experimental art game, or a game that comments on loopholes in games, and the exploits in your game are intentional. However, for most types of game, especially those involving competition against the system of the game or against other players, exploits are something to be sought out and eliminated from the game’s design. Making judgment calls around issues like this is part of your creative role as a game designer.

死胡同是游戏中出现的一种情况,玩家无法继续游戏,这可能是因为他们做了某件事。假设在游戏中有一把钥匙,玩家可以捡起并扔到任何地方,有一扇用钥匙可以打开的锁着的门,还有一口井太深或太窄而无法爬进去。玩家需要打开门才能进入游戏的下一部分,钥匙可以在附近的某个地方找到。但如果玩家捡起钥匙并将其扔进井里怎么办?那么他们就被困住了。他们打不开门,拿不到钥匙,也无法继续游戏。他们需要以某种方式重置游戏世界,让钥匙回到它的初始位置。

A dead end is a situation that arises in a game where the player cannot proceed, possibly because of something they did. Let’s say there is a game with a key that the player can pick up and drop anywhere, a locked door that the key unlocks, and a well that is too deep or too narrow to climb down into. The player needs to unlock the door to proceed to the next part of the game, and the key can be found somewhere nearby. But what if the player picks up the key and drops it down the well? Then they’re stuck. They can’t open the door, they can’t get to the key, and they can’t proceed in the game. They need to somehow reset the game world so that the key is back in its initial position.

也许死亡并重新开始可以实现这一点,但如果物体在检查点之间保持其位置会怎样?也许从之前的保存中重新加载游戏可以让钥匙回到其原始位置(使用称为“保存 scumming”的技术),但如果游戏只有一个保存槽,并且钥匙掉入井中后游戏立即自动保存会怎样?那么玩家就真的陷入困境了,尽管他们甚至可能没有意识到这一点。他们可能会继续寻找另一把钥匙,变得越来越无聊和沮丧。如果他们意识到发生了什么,并且他们想继续玩,那么他们将不得不重新开始整个游戏。更有可能的是,他们会退出并转到另一款游戏。

Maybe dying and restarting will do that, but what if objects keep their position across checkpoints? Maybe reloading the game from a previous save will get the key back to its original position (using the technique known as “save scumming”), but what if the game only has one save slot and the game autosaved right after the key went down the well? Then the player is truly stuck, though they might not even realize it. They might keep looking for another key, becoming increasingly bored and frustrated. If they realize what has happened and they want to keep playing, then they will have to start the whole game over again. More likely, they will quit and move on to a different game.

这种情况听起来可能有点奇怪,但很多游戏在发售时就已经存在这种问题,等待着不幸的玩家。死胡同对于具有大量系统性、突发性和程序生成玩法的游戏来说是一个特殊的问题,尽管通常可以通过设计来避免它们。

This situation might sound outlandish, but many games have shipped with this kind of problem lying in wait for unlucky players. Dead ends present a particular problem for games that have a lot of systemic, emergent, and procedurally generated gameplay, though there are usually ways to design them out of existence.

死胡同也可以被视为游戏玩法的有效组成部分,尤其是当玩家清楚地知道自己已经陷入了死胡同时。随着《洞穴探险》《以撒的结合》《超越光速》等游戏的出现,这一领域开辟了广阔的创意可能性新视野,这些游戏将 roguelike 类型与其他风格融合在一起。2

Dead ends can also be embraced as a valid part of gameplay, especially if it’s clear to the player that they’ve wound up in a dead end. Vast new horizons of creative possibility have opened up in this area, with the arrival of games like Spelunky, The Binding of Isaac, and FTL: Faster Than Light, which hybridize the roguelike genre with other styles.2

如果您无法在测试版中发现所有漏洞和死胡同,请不要担心:这些问题通常隐藏在显而易见的地方,有时它们真的很擅长隐藏。我们必须找出一些棘手的隐藏问题,这也是我们拥有后期制作阶段的原因之一。

Don’t worry if you can’t catch all your exploits and dead ends by beta: these are problems that often hide in plain sight, and sometimes they’re really good at hiding. The fact that we’ll have to seek out some thorny, hidden problems is a part of why we have a postproduction period.

Beta 阶段、同心开发和游戏健康

The Beta Phase, Concentric Development, and Game Health

在花费了时间进行 alpha 测试后,beta 阶段是将注意力重新集中到我在第 13 章中描述的同心式开发上的好时机,但这也可能是实践同心式开发的困难时期。游戏开发的一个不幸传统是,我们经常在 beta 里程碑临近时尽快将内容放入游戏中,而不一定按照同心式开发所建议的方式处理细节。同心式开发的结构和纪律将在真正重要的时候创造自由。我们不会费力地在最后救火,我们将有更多的时间和精神带宽来处理细节。如果我们过快地添加内容,我们最终可能会得到一个游戏感觉很差的 beta 版本,它太难或太容易,或者有错误或损坏。我试着遵循一句古老的格言:“少欲速则不达。” 3

Having spent time stubbing things in for alpha, the beta phase is a good time to return our focus to the concentric development I described in chapter 13, but it can also be a difficult time to practice concentric development. It’s an unfortunate game development tradition that we are often putting content into the game as quickly as we can as the beta milestone approaches, not necessarily taking care of the details in the way that concentric development recommends. The structure and discipline of concentric development will create the freedom to be playfully creative when it really matters. We won’t be struggling to fight fires at the end, and we’ll have more time and mental bandwidth for finesse. If we slap content in too quickly, we might end up with a beta build that has poor game feel, that is much too difficult or too easy, or that is buggy or broken. I try to live by the old adage, “Less haste, more speed.”3

在 Beta 里程碑时,我们必须再次检查游戏的健康状况,就像我们在 alpha 阶段所做的那样。现在,密切关注游戏的技术性能至关重要。如果我们的帧速率很差,如果我们的加载时间很长,如果我们的灯光有故障,那么这就是我们必须开始采取行动解决这些问题的时候了。同样,如果我们有任何严重的设计问题或特别严重的错误,那么我们必须立即开始修复它们。您不必在 Beta 里程碑到来时处理游戏的所有健康问题,但您至少必须有一个解决这些问题的好计划,并且必须在达到里程碑后立即开始这样做。带有严重错误或低帧速率的游戏不会成功。

At the beta milestone, we must check in on the health of our game again, just like we did at alpha. It’s now crucial that we attend closely to the technical performance of our game. If our frame rate is poor, if our load times are long, if our lighting is glitchy, this is the time that we must start acting to fix these problems. Similarly, if we have any severe design problems or particularly nasty bugs, then we must start fixing them right away. You don’t have to deal with all your game’s health issues by the time the beta milestone arrives, but you must at least have a good plan for addressing them and must start doing so straight after you reach the milestone. A game that ships with bad bugs or a low frame rate is not cued up for success.

致谢与归属

Credits and Attribution

如果您遵循了第 5 章中我给您的建议,那么您就一直在记录 (a) 您在游戏中使用的任何发现的和第三方资产的归属,以及 (b) 参与您游戏的人员及其工作。当需要创建游戏内积分和游戏内归属时,您应该可以相当快速轻松地完成工作。如果您没有保留一份连续的列表,那么随着测试版的临近,您可能会做一些痛苦的工作,因为您需要挑选游戏内容,建立一个需要被记入人员名单。一些可购买的资产包不需要记入,因此请仔细检查购买时附带的许可信息。

If you followed the advice that I gave you in chapter 5, you’ve been keeping a running record of (a) the attributions for any found and third-party assets that you’ve used in your game, and (b) the people who worked on your game and what they did. When it comes time to create the in-game credits and the in-game attribution, you should have a fairly quick and easy job on your hands. If you didn’t keep a running list, you might have some painful work to do as beta approaches, as you pick through your game’s content, building a list of who needs to be credited. Some purchasable asset packs don’t require crediting, so carefully check the licensing information that comes with your purchases.

在对第三方资产进行归因时,有一个悬而未决的问题:您需要多详细地说明,以及您是否应该列出您使用的每个资产,还是只列出您使用其作品的创作者的名字。如果每项资产的许可证都规定了应如何归因,则您必须严格遵守该许可证。

There’s an open question when attributing third-party assets of how granular you need to be, and whether you should list every individual asset that you used or just list the names of the individual creators whose work you used. If the license of each asset specifies how it should be credited, you must follow the license closely.

您应该始终将所有为游戏创作做出贡献的人都列入游戏的荣誉名单中,因此请仔细考虑谁参与了游戏的制作,尤其是在开发的早期阶段。游戏开发者的简历和作品对他们的生计非常重要,因此游戏荣誉名单中的遗漏可能会给他们带来麻烦。

You should always include everyone who contributed to the creation of your game in the game’s credits, so think carefully about who worked on the game, especially in the early stages of development. Game developers’ résumés and portfolios are very important to their livelihoods, so an omission in the credits of a game can cause them problems.

达到 Beta 里程碑的挑战

The Challenge of Reaching the Beta Milestone

游戏设计师通常必须做出一些艰难的决定才能达到 Beta 里程碑。当我们对游戏范围及其内容做出最终决定时,可能会特别难以只见树木不见森林。获得一些外部指导来帮助我们设定优先事项通常非常有价值,我们稍后将讨论 Beta 阶段的里程碑审查。

Game designers usually have to make some difficult calls in order to reach the beta milestone. As we make our final decisions about the scope of our game and its content, it can become particularly hard to see the forest for the trees. Receiving some external guidance to help us set priorities is often very valuable, and we’ll talk about the milestone review that takes place at beta in a few moments.

我必须坦诚地告诉你:尽管 Beta 里程碑很容易定义——游戏完成!——但 Beta 和 alpha 一样,有时也是一个模糊的里程碑。就像游戏开发者在 alpha 阶段可能耍的花招一样(利用我们在第 28 章中讨论的功能和内容之间的模糊界限),我们可能会在 Beta 阶段尝试一些卑鄙的伎俩,以便在里程碑下完成游戏内容,以让团队领导满意。最著名的花招是将缺失的内容写成我们错误数据库中的“A”级错误。

I have to be honest with you: even though the beta milestone is so easy to define—the game is complete!—beta, like alpha, is sometimes a fuzzy milestone. Just like the dodges that game developers might pull at alpha (exploiting the blurry line between features and content that we discussed in chapter 28), there are dirty tricks we might try at beta to scuttle in under the milestone, as we attempt to make the game content complete in a way that will satisfy our team’s leadership. The best-known dodge is to write up a missing piece of content as an “A” class bug in our bug database.

如果我说我没有使用过这个技巧,那我就是撒谎了——我曾经使用过,尽管只有经过团队最高领导的明确许可,而且至少缺失的内容在错误数据库中,在我们的雷达上,并且正在被跟踪。有时,当我们进行分类以达到必须达到的测试里程碑时,这种躲避是必要的而且并非所有测试后的内容添加都是相同的。大多数都是有风险的,但有些比其他的更安全。如果你最终发现有多个“A”级错误,而这些错误实际上是缺少内容,那么你的项目可能会在后期制作中遇到麻烦。在测试后立即通过添加内容来修复错误。

I’d be a liar if I said that I haven’t used this trick—I have, although only ever with the explicit permission of my team’s most senior leadership, and at least then the missing content is in the bug database, on our radar, and being tracked. Sometimes this kind of dodge is necessary when we’re doing triage to hit a beta milestone that must be hit, and not all post-beta content additions are equal. Most are risky, but some are safer than others. If you end up with more than a few “A” class bugs that are actually missing pieces of content, then your project could be headed for trouble in postproduction. Fix the bugs—by adding the content—immediately after beta.

在测试里程碑之后,游戏开发者有时会对其内容进行重大更改,以至于可能还不如添加新内容。这也是有风险的:风险来自于在游戏后期添加某些内容,而这些内容带来的问题比解决的问题还多。与功能一样,每次我们添加新内容时,我们都有引入错误、内容问题和游戏设计问题的风险。后期制作阶段越长,重大内容更改的风险就越小,尤其是在后期制作早期进行更改的情况下。

After the beta milestone, game developers will sometimes make changes to their content that are so major they might as well be adding new content. This is risky too: the risk comes from adding something to the game late in the day that creates more problems than it solves. As with features, every time we add new content, we risk introducing bugs, content problems, and game design problems. The longer that your postproduction phase is, the less risky major content changes will be, especially if they’re made early in postproduction.

添加或更改与游戏的系统或交互部分相关的内容比添加或更改静态资产(如标题屏幕背景)或线性资产(如预渲染的过场动画视频文件)的风险更大。将占位符过场动画视频替换为最终完成的版本并非毫无风险——例如,新的视频文件可能更大,并且可能会暴露与内存相关的错误。但是,将一段静态或线性内容替换为另一段静态或线性内容的风险要小得多,因为在系统和交互部分中乱搞是更有可能出现重大问题的。

It is riskier to add or change content relating to systemic or interactive parts of a game than it is to add or change static assets like title screen backgrounds or linear assets like prerendered cutscene video files. Switching out a placeholder cutscene video for the final, finished version isn’t risk-free—the new video file is probably larger and might expose a bug related to memory, for example. But it’s much less risky to replace one piece of static or linear content for another than it is to mess around with the systemic and interactive parts of your game, where major problems are much more likely to arise.

Beta 里程碑总结

Summarizing the Beta Milestone

总而言之,在 Beta 里程碑中,所有这些都应该存在:

In summary, at the beta milestone, all these things should be present:

  • 游戏的所有功能和内容都应至少以首次可交付的形式呈现。
  • All features and content of the game should be present in at least first-pass shippable form.
  • 所有前端、菜单和界面元素都应至少以首次交付的形式存在,可能包括但不限于:
  • All front end, menus, and interface elements should be present in at least first-pass shippable form, possibly including but not limited to:
  •   开发团队和/或游戏工作室的徽标图像或电影。
  •   A logo image or movie for the development team and/or game studio.
  •   出版商或学校的标志图像或电影。
  •   A logo image or movie for the publisher or school.
  •   标题屏幕(在核心游戏体验开始之前,作为决策中心的界面元素)。
  •   A title screen (the interface element that acts as a central hub for decision-making, before the core game experience begins).
  •   片尾字幕或序列。
  •   A credits screen or sequence.
  •   对任何发现的或第三方资产的归属。
  •   Attribution for any found or third-party assets.
  •   “游戏结束”屏幕,宣布一轮游戏的结束(如果适用)。
  •   A “game over” screen, that announces the end of a round of play (if applicable).
  •   一个或多个选项屏幕,允许玩家配置体验(如果适用)。
  •   An options screen or screens, allowing players to configure the experience (if applicable).
  • 应用程序或可执行文件所需的所有分辨率的图标图像以及图标的正确标题。
  • An icon image at all required resolutions for the app or executable and proper titling for the icon.
  • 使用游戏前启动器的游戏的启动画面图像。
  • A splash screen image for a game that uses a pre-game launcher.
  • 游戏在线商店所需的任何图像和文字。
  • Any images and text required for the game’s online store presence.
  • 任何成就的系统和内容,无论是在游戏中还是连接到发布者服务(如果适用)。
  • System and content for any achievements, either in-game or connected to a publisher service (if applicable).
  • 您计划放入游戏中的任何复活节彩蛋(玩家的隐藏惊喜)。
  • Any Easter eggs (hidden surprises for the player) that you plan to put in the game.
  • 如果游戏必须通过认证流程才能发布,开发人员应尽可能满足认证要求(第 34 章中描述)。
  • If the game will have to pass a certification process to be released, the developers should meet as many of the certification requirements (described in chapter 34) as they can.

此外,在 Beta 里程碑处,我们必须制定并开始实施可行的计划来解决以下问题:

In addition, at the beta milestone we must make and start to implement an actionable plan to address:

  • 任何未解决的设计问题
  • Any outstanding design problems
  • 任何性能问题
  • Any performance issues
  • 突出的缺陷
  • The outstanding bugs

Beta 版的里程碑评审

The Milestone Review That Takes Place at Beta

当一款游戏达到其测试里程碑,功能内容都已完善时,这将为我们带来一个绝佳的机会——对于短期项目来说,这也许是最后一次大机会——召开里程碑评审会议,获取团队内外人员的反馈,以指导我们完成后期制作阶段。

When a game achieves its beta milestone and is now feature complete and content complete, this presents a great opportunity—and for short projects, perhaps the last big chance—to hold a milestone review meeting and get some feedback from people inside and outside the team to guide us through the postproduction phase.

与 alpha 阶段的审核一样,大型专业游戏的 beta 里程碑审核可能需要一些时间,而较短的游戏可以更快地完成审核。确保有效利用团队的时间,但不要错过从值得信赖的同行和导师那里获得最后一轮坦诚、高质量反馈的机会,并真正深入研究您的游戏。在 beta 阶段,通常有大量小问题需要识别和讨论,游戏团队很难决定哪些问题很重要。正如我之前提到的,当我们因细节而无法看到全局时,外部输入是一种非常有效的补救措施。

Like the review at alpha, the beta milestone review for a big professional game will probably take some time, while shorter games can be reviewed more quickly. Make sure that you use your team’s time effectively, but don’t miss the chance to get one last round of candid, high-quality feedback from your trusted peers and mentors and to dive really deeply into your game. At beta, there are usually a large number of small issues to identify and discuss, and it can be hard for the game team to decide which of the issues are important. As I mentioned earlier, external input is a very effective remedy when we can’t see the big picture because we’re overwhelmed by detail.

在里程碑评审会议上的简短介绍性演讲中,开发团队领导层应该准备好说:

In their short introductory presentation at the milestone review meeting, the development team leadership should be ready to say:

  • 他们认为谁是他们游戏的受众。团队的定位声明(参见第 7 章)现在应该非常完善了。
  • Who they consider to be the audience for their game. The team’s positioning statement (see chapter 7) should now be very refined.
  • 他们的项目处于测试阶段。例如:
  • Where their project is at regarding beta. For example:
  •   他们大力推进测试,内容齐全,游戏没有漏洞,玩法平衡。(我们将在第 32 章讨论游戏平衡。)
  •   They hit beta strongly and are entirely content complete, with a game that is free of bugs and well-balanced in gameplay. (We’ll talk about game balance in chapter 32.)
  •   他们立即进入测试阶段,并完全满足测试要求,内容完整。还有一些内容需要完善,一些错误需要修复,游戏玩法需要平衡。
  •   They hit beta right on and exactly met the beta requirements, being content complete. There is some content polishing to be done, there are bugs to fix, and gameplay needs balancing.
  •   他们进入了测试阶段,内容也比较完整,但是很多内容需要完善,有很多错误需要修复,而且游戏玩法需要大量平衡。
  •   They hit beta, and are content complete, but a lot of their content needs polishing, there are many bugs to fix, and the gameplay needs a lot of balancing.
  •   他们尚未进入测试阶段,而且他们说缺少什么使得他们无法进入测试阶段。
  •   They’re not yet at beta, and they say what is missing that is keeping them from being at beta.
  • 该项目是否存在任何已知问题。
  • Whether there are any known issues with the project.
  • 从里程碑审查小组获得什么样的反馈会很有用。
  • What kind of feedback it would be useful to receive from the milestone review group.

在 Beta 里程碑中,评审小组成员现在应该非常小心地及时给出注释,正如我们在第 20 章“建设性和及时的批评”中讨论的那样。游戏现在已经完成,因此必须提出问题的解决方案(在大多数情况下,游戏设计师无法通过对游戏进行微小的更改来解决问题。虽然有些人可能认为在不进行重大更改的情况下解决问题是一项不可能完成的任务,但有效的设计师知道,即使在最严格的限制下也有回旋的余地,并且会乐于接受挑战,寻找巧妙、高效且低风险的解决方案来解决手头的问题。

At the beta milestone, the review group members should now be very careful to give notes that are timely, as we discussed under “Constructive and Timely Criticism” in chapter 20. The game is now complete, so solutions to problems must come (in most circumstances) from making minor changes to the game. While some might see this—fixing problems without making major changes—as an impossible task, effective designers understand that there is always room to maneuver within even the strictest constraints, and will relish the challenge of looking for clever, efficient, and low-risk resolutions to the issues at hand.

团队还应在测试版中进行内部评审,由专业和跨专业小组聚在一起讨论测试版以及后期制作期间需要做的事情。(您可以在第 20 章中阅读有关内部评审的更多信息。)这些内部评审小组还应注意及时记录笔记,并讨论他们制定的行动计划所涉及的风险。

The team should also have an internal review at beta, with disciplinary and interdisciplinary groups coming together to talk about the beta build and about what needs to be done during postproduction. (You can read more about internal reviews in chapter 20.) These internal review groups should also be careful to keep their notes timely and should have a discussion about the risks entailed by the action plans they develop.

测试版的质量和健康状况可以告诉我们很多有关最终游戏可能如何发展的信息,尤其是在后期制作阶段较短的情况下。如果游戏在测试版中没有特别好地整合在一起,那么这对团队来说可能是一段艰难的时期。他们可能需要来自社区、领导层和彼此的情感支持。

The quality and health of a beta build can tell us a lot about how the finished game is likely to turn out, especially if the postproduction phase is short. If the game hasn’t come together particularly well at beta, it can be a difficult time for the team. They might need some emotional support from their community, their leadership, and each other.

但即使测试阶段进展不顺利,您仍有很多机会在后期制作中顺利达到最终候选发布阶段。在测试阶段锁定游戏内容,然后进入后期制作阶段,给自己时间对游戏进行微调,直到它真正取得成功。

But even if things are rough at the beta milestone, you still have lots of opportunity in postproduction to reach the final release candidate milestone in good style. Lock in the content of your game at beta and move into postproduction, giving yourself time to fine-tune your game until it really sings.

  1. 1.Fullerton游戏设计工作室,第 4 版,311。

  2. 1.  Fullerton, Game Design Workshop, 4th ed., 311.

  3. 2. “Roguelike(或 rogue-like)是角色扮演类电子游戏的一个子类型,其特点是通过程序生成的关卡进行地下城探索、回合制游戏、基于图块的图形以及玩家角色的永久死亡。”“Roguelike”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike

  4. 2.  “Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a subgenre of role-playing video games characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, tile-based graphics, and permanent death of the player character.” “Roguelike,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roguelike.

  5. 3 . “Festina Lente”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festina_lente

  6. 3.  “Festina Lente,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festina_lente.

 

 

第四阶段:后期制作——定稿和润色

Phase Four: Postproduction—Fixing and Polishing

 

 

32 后期制作阶段

32    The Postproduction Phase

在现代电子游戏上,当游戏内容在测试阶段完成之后,在最终候选发布阶段完成之前,还有很多事情要做。后期制作是完成所有需要做的事情的时间。

There’s a lot still to do on a modern videogame, once the game is content complete at the beta milestone, and before it can be considered finished at the final release candidate milestone. Postproduction is the time to do everything that needs doing.

此阶段的名称是对电影和电视制作的后期制作过程的致敬,但请注意,游戏后期制作与电影或电视后期制作截然不同。在电影和电视中,后期制作是指在拍摄电影或视频后发生的一切。电影和电视实际上是在后期制作中制作的,通过编辑、声音设计、视觉效果创建和颜色分级的过程,从拍摄的视频的原始粘土中雕刻出来。1

The name of this phase is a nod to the postproduction process of film and television production, but be aware that game postproduction is very different from movie or TV postproduction. In film and television, postproduction refers to everything that happens after the film or video is shot. Movies and TV are effectively made in postproduction, sculpted from the raw clay of captured video through a process of editing, sound design, visual effects creation, and color grading.1

但是,在项目的完整制作阶段,游戏已经制作完成。游戏的后期制作就像电影和电视的后期制作的最后阶段,此时“画面锁定”已经实现,所有声音设计和视觉效果工作都已完成。2 然后进行最终的音频混合,并对需要处理的任何其他元素进行微调。游戏在后期制作阶段需要音频混合和色彩分级,以及其他游戏特有的内容。

But a game has already been made and completed in the full production phase of the project. Postproduction for a game is like the very end of movie and TV postproduction, when “picture lock” has been achieved and all the sound design and visual effects work has been done.2 Then the final audio mix will be made, and any other elements that need work will be fine-tuned. Games need audio mixing and color grading during their postproduction phase, along with other things specific to games.

在完成《神秘海域 2:纵横四海》的制作时,我们意识到需要一个正式的后期制作游戏项目阶段。这个项目对顽皮狗来说是一个巨大的成功,但也带来了很多挑战。其中一个挑战是,我们在测试版和候选发布版之间没有留出足够的时间来完成我们需要做的所有事情。这项工作包括平衡和均衡互动音乐和声音的音频级别、微调关卡的灯光、完善色彩分级和其他后期处理图像效果。所有这些工作都堆积在游戏平衡和错误修复之上,而这些也是我们在项目结束时必须完成的。

The need for a formal postproduction game project phase came home to us while we were finishing work on Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, a project that was a big success for Naughty Dog, but that had brought a lot of challenges with it. One of those challenges was that we hadn’t left enough time between beta and our release candidate milestone to do everything that we needed to do. That work included balancing and equalizing the audio levels of our interactive music and sound, fine-tuning the lighting of the levels, and finessing our color grading and the other postprocessing image effects. All of that work piled up on top of the game balancing and bug fixing that we also had to do at the end of the project.

我们几乎完成了《神秘海域 2 》的所有工作,但就我们为自己设定的高标准而言,我们只是勉强过关,这意味着团队在最后时刻需要做很多紧张的工作。因此,在《神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计》中,我们确保在最后阶段给自己一个真正的后期制作阶段,游戏内容在早期测试版中得到妥善锁定,让我们有更多时间对其进行完善。

We just about got everything done on Uncharted 2, but we only really scraped by in terms of the high standards we set for ourselves, and it meant a lot of stressful last-minute work for the team. So, on Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, we made sure that we gave ourselves a real postproduction phase at the end, where the game’s content was locked down properly with an earlier beta, giving us more time to polish it well.

后期制作需要多长时间?

How Long Should Postproduction Take?

这个问题没有一个适合所有项目的答案,但我们可以寻求同行的智慧。Tale of Tales 是一家电子游戏开发工作室,由当代艺术家 Auriea Harvey 和 Micha ël Samyn 于 2003 年创立。他们 2013 年的优秀且鼓舞人心的文章“美丽的艺术计划”中,Auriea 和 Micha ël建议:“项目完成后,我们应该花同样的时间让它变得更好。” 3

There’s no one answer to this question that fits every project, but we can seek out the wisdom of our peers. Tale of Tales is a videogame development studio founded by contemporary artists Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn in 2003. In their excellent and inspirational 2013 essay, “The Beautiful Art Program,” Auriea and Michaël advise: “After the project is finished, we should spend the same amount of time on making it better.”3

我认为这个建议非常好,虽然乍一看似乎有些矛盾。游戏完成后,我们花时间改进游戏,会给游戏带来巨大的好处。我从来没有花过和制作游戏一样多的时间来完善游戏,但投入后期制作的时间越长,效果就越好。我建议将整个项目时间的至少 20% 用于后期制作。

I think that this advice, which might seem paradoxical at first, is excellent. Games benefit hugely from the time we spend improving them once they are complete. I’ve never been able to spend the same amount of time polishing a game as I spent on building it, but the longer you can devote to postproduction, the better. I recommend spending at least 20 percent of your total project time in postproduction.

无论是在行业还是在学术界,许多项目都有严格的时间限制,最终候选发布里程碑的确定日期都是提前很久就规划好的。我们必须从这个完成日期开始倒推,规划我们的测试里程碑的日期,以便给自己足够的时间进行后期制作。对于时间上不限的项目,我们可能能够给自己尽可能多的后期制作时间。这可能很有帮助,但要小心。你必须在正确完成游戏和继续无限期地修改游戏之间找到自己的平衡点。

Many projects in both industry and academia are strictly time-limited, with a firm and fixed date for the final release candidate milestone planned out a long time in advance. We have to work backward from this completion date to plan the date of our beta milestone, in order to give ourselves enough time for postproduction. For projects that are open-ended in time, we might be able to give ourselves as much postproduction time as we want or need. This could be helpful, but be wary. You’ll have to find your own balance between finishing your game properly and continuing to tinker with it indefinitely.

有些项目可能会将其最终发布候选里程碑进一步推迟,以便为后期制作中有大量工作要做的项目提供更多时间。只要我们警惕第 15 章中讨论的改变目标的问题,这可能是可以的。对于许多项目来说,一旦我们进入后期制作,最终截止日期就无法更改,只是因为它太近了,而且支持商业游戏发布的所有机制都已启动。然后我们必须弄清楚如何最好地利用我们可用的后期制作时间。

Some projects might have their final release candidate milestone moved further out to give more time to a project that has a lot to do in postproduction. This might be okay as long as we guard against the problem of moving goalposts that we discussed in chapter 15. For many projects, the final deadline can’t be moved once we’re in postproduction, simply because it’s too close, and all of the mechanisms that support the launch of a commercial game have already been set into motion. Then we must figure out how best to spend the postproduction time that we have available to us.

让我们来看看在视频游戏的后期制作过程中我们到底做了些什么。大多数类型的项目都有三种后期制作活动:修复错误、完善和平衡游戏。

Let’s take a look at exactly what we do on a videogame during postproduction. Three postproduction activities are common to most types of project: bug fixing, polishing, and balancing the game.

漏洞修复

Bug Fixing

在第 23 章中,我们讨论了查找错误并跟踪错误修复的过程。当游戏达到 Beta 版时,我们通常会有一长串需要修复的错误,即使我们在出现重大错误时就处理它们。每次我们向游戏中添加内容时都会出现新的错误,这是很正常的,并且在伴随 Beta 里程碑的一系列活动中,我们的错误列表通常会快速增长。在 Beta 里程碑之后,团队的大部分工作可能都集中在错误修复上。此时,QA 比以往任何时候都更加成为开发过程的核心,因为错误数据库的内容代表了团队和完成游戏之间工作的主要部分。

In chapter 23, we talked about the process of finding bugs and then tracking how they get fixed. By the time a game reaches beta, we usually have a long list of bugs that need fixing, even if we have been dealing with major bugs as soon as they arise. It’s normal for new bugs to appear every time we add something to our game, and in the flurry of activity that accompanies the beta milestone, our list of bugs usually grows at a rapid rate. After the beta milestone, the majority of the team’s effort may well be focused on bug fixing. This is a time when QA becomes more central to the development process than ever before, since the contents of the bug database represent a major part of the work standing between the team and a finished game.

我们会检查和讨论个别错误,有时会非常激烈,甚至激烈,但希望始终在尊重和信任的氛围中进行。此时,每个团队成员都必须牢记,我们都在共同努力,以实现游戏的卓越。我们可能会发生冲突,因为我们在不同的学科或部门重视不同的事情。对一个团队成员来说似乎微不足道的错误对另一个人来说可能是一件大事。我们应该超越短期目标,始终思考什么对游戏和我们的玩家观众最有利。通过共同努力,我们可以找出如何在剩下的时间内最好地处理每个问题。

Individual bugs will be inspected and debated, sometimes energetically or even heatedly, but hopefully always in an atmosphere of respect and trust. This is a time when it is crucial for every team member to keep in mind that we are all working together to achieve greatness in the game. We might be brought into conflict because we value different things in different disciplines or departments. A bug that seems minor to one team member might be a big deal to someone else. We should look past our short-term goals and always think about what will benefit the game and our audience of players the most. Working together, we can figure out how best to handle each issue with the time we have left.

当我们修复某个错误时,我们所做的工作很容易给游戏带来其他问题。有些修复比其他修复更危险:任何导致游戏运行方式发生全局变化的错误修复都更危险,而可能只影响游戏一小部分的修复通常更安全。当然,测试应该能发现任何新出现的问题,但越接近发布,新问题就越有可能未被发现。

When we’re working on a fix for a particular bug, the work that we do can easily introduce other problems into the game. Some fixes are riskier than others: any bug fix that introduces a global change into the way the game works is riskier, while a fix that could only possibly affect one small part of the game is usually safer. Of course, testing should reveal any new problems that get introduced, but the closer we get to shipping, the more likely it is that new problems will go undetected.

在数字发行时代,我们可以发布更新来修复游戏中出现的任何问题,但在后期制作过程中我们仍应非常小心。由于我们所做的更改而潜入的未被发现的问题仍可能给我们带来麻烦。如果我们发送给影响者或评论者的游戏版本或我们的发行版本中存在严重错误怎么办?如果人们对我们的游戏产生负面印象,或者根本无法玩它,我们可能会错过一次职业发展机会。病毒式传播的严重错误视频很容易扼杀观众对游戏的兴奋感。

In the age of digital distribution, we can issue updates to fix any problems that ship with our game, but we should still be very careful during postproduction. Undetected issues that creep in because of changes we make could still cause us big problems. What if there’s a nasty bug in the build of the game that we send to an influencer or reviewer or in our shipping build? If people get a negative impression of our game, or can’t play it at all, we might miss out on a career-making opportunity. Videos of spectacularly bad bugs that go viral can easily kill audience excitement about a game.

我并不主张在后期制作过程中对错误修复采取完全偏执的态度——经验丰富的游戏设计师知道修复任何错误的风险有多大。但我们应该谨慎行事,尤其是在后期制作的最后阶段。越接近最终候选发布里程碑,我们的修复就必须越安全——我们已经没有时间去寻找和修复任何新出现的问题了。因此,在后期制作过程中,请以医疗紧急情况分类的态度来处理错误修复。提高需要进行的更大、更危险的修复的优先级,并首先解决它们。

I’m not advocating for total paranoia during postproduction bug fixing—experienced game designers learn to tell how risky any given bug fix is. But we should tread carefully, especially toward the end of postproduction. The closer the final release candidate milestone gets, the safer our fixes have to be—we are running out of the time we’d need to find and fix any new problems that get introduced. So approach your bug fixing during postproduction with an attitude of triage in a medical emergency. Raise the priority of the bigger, riskier fixes you need to make and tackle them first.

抛光

Polishing

一旦游戏在 Beta 阶段完成,你可以通过进行一些小改动来完善部分内容,以改善外观、声音和感觉。在上一章中,我们讨论了如何将内容实现到第一遍的完善水平,这样我们就可以根据需要发布该内容,尽管我们需要一些时间来改进它。希望我们的第一遍工作具有相当高的完善水平——与任何类型的手工艺一样,我们越有经验,我们的第一遍工作就会越精细。

Once a game is complete at the beta milestone, you may be able to polish some of the content by making small changes to improve how things look, sound, and feel. In the previous chapter, we discussed implementing content to a first-pass level of polish, where we could ship with that content if we had to, even though we’d like some time to make it better. Hopefully our first-pass work has a pretty high level of polish—as with any kind of artisanship, the more experienced we become, the more finely crafted our first passes will be.

我们在后期制作上花费的时间越多,错误越少,我们就能投入越多的时间来完善内容。相反,如果我们没有太多的后期制作时间,而且有很多错误需要修复,那么就没有太多的时间来完善内容。错误通常比内容完善更重要:没有人愿意推出一款看起来和听起来都不太好的游戏,但一款有错误的游戏更不可能成功。

The more time we have overall in postproduction, and the fewer bugs we have, the more time we can devote to polishing our content. Conversely, if we don’t have much postproduction time, and there are a lot of bugs to fix, there won’t be much time for content polishing. Bugs typically take precedence over content polish: no one wants to ship a game that doesn’t look and sound great, but a buggy game is even less likely to succeed.

和修复错误一样,我们在后期制作期间对游戏进行的任何润色工作都是有风险的,因为它可能会给游戏带来新的错误和设计问题。和修复错误一样,润色工作需要的改动越大,风险就越大。主要的润色工作——尤其是对游戏全局进行修改的工作——应该在后期制作期间尽早进行。所有润色工作都应在后期制作进行到一半时完成,这样我们才有时间发现并修复出现的任何问题。

Like bug fixing, any work that we do to polish the game during postproduction is risky, since it might introduce new bugs and design problems into the game. As with bug fixing, the bigger the change that the polish requires, the bigger the risk. Major pieces of polish—especially any polish that changes the game globally—should happen as early as possible during postproduction. All polish should be finished by halfway through postproduction, giving us time to spot and fix any problems that do get introduced.

平衡

Balancing

在他们的著作《游戏设计师面临的挑战:电子游戏设计师的非数字化练习》一书中,Brenda Romero 和 Ian Schreiber 对游戏平衡给出了如下定义:

In their book Challenges for Game Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game Designers, Brenda Romero and Ian Schreiber give the following definition of game balance:

平衡:用于描述游戏系统状态的术语,包括“平衡”或“不平衡”。不平衡的游戏方式意味着太简单、太难,或者只适合某些玩家群体。平衡的游戏方式则为目标受众提供了一致的挑战。对于竞争性多人游戏,平衡还包括这样一种理念:没有任何一种策略天生就比其他策略更好,也不存在任何漏洞让玩家绕过游戏挑战。我们有时也将单个游戏元素称为“平衡”,这意味着获得它的成本与其效果成正比,就像 CCG 中的卡牌或 FPS 或 RPG 中的武器一样。4

Balance: A term used to describe the state of a game’s systems as either “balanced” or “unbalanced.” When the play is unbalanced, it is too easy, too difficult, or optimal for only certain groups of players. When play is balanced, it provides a consistent challenge for its target audience. For competitive multiplayer games, it also includes the idea that no single strategy should be inherently better than any other, and that no exploits exist that let a player bypass the challenge of the game. We also sometimes call individual game elements “balanced” with each other, meaning that the cost of obtaining it is proportional to its effect, as with cards in a CCG or weapons in an FPS or RPG.4

大多数游戏设计师都努力在游戏的预制作和完整制作过程中平衡游戏设计,设置机制并选择数字以创造有趣、愉快的体验,并尝试创建一款既不太容易也不太难的游戏。然而,要准确实现游戏的平衡可能很困难就在测试里程碑附近。项目的后期制作阶段为我们提供了最后一次机会来微调游戏的平衡性。

Most game designers strive to balance their game’s design all the way throughout preproduction and full production, setting up mechanisms and choosing numbers to create an interesting, enjoyable experience, and attempting to create a game that is neither too easy nor too hard. However, it can be difficult to get a game’s balance exactly right by the beta milestone. The postproduction phase of a project gives us one last chance to fine-tune our game’s balance.

Ian Schreiber在他的博客“游戏平衡概念”中说道:

On his blog, Game Balance Concepts, Ian Schreiber says:

虽然可能过于简单化,但我们可以说游戏平衡主要就是确定在游戏中使用什么数字。

这立即引发了一个问题:如果一款游戏不涉及任何数字或数学怎么办?例如,Tag 的游乐场游戏没有数字。这是否意味着“游戏平衡”的概念在应用于 Tag 时毫无意义?

答案是 Tag 确实有数字:每个玩家可以跑多快、跑多远、玩家之间的距离有多近、游戏区域的大小、玩家“玩”多久。我们实际上并没有跟踪任何这些数据,因为 Tag 不是一项职业运动……但如果它是一项职业运动,你最好相信会有交易卡和网站上有各种各样的数字!

因此,每个游戏确实都有数字(即使它们是隐藏的或隐含的),这些数字的目的是描述游戏状态。5

While perhaps an oversimplification, we can say that game balance is mostly about figuring out what numbers to use in a game.

This immediately brings up the question: what if a game doesn’t have any numbers or math involved? The playground game of Tag has no numbers, for example. Does that mean that the concept of “game balance” is meaningless when applied to Tag?

The answer is that Tag does in fact have numbers: how fast and how long each player can run, how close the players are to each other, the dimensions of the play area, how long someone is “it.” We don’t really track any of these stats because Tag isn’t a professional sport but if it was a professional sport, you’d better believe there would be trading cards and websites with all kinds of numbers on them!

So, every game does in fact have numbers (even if they are hidden or implicit), and the purpose of those numbers is to describe the game state.5

一旦我们进入 alpha 阶段,我们游戏的所有机制就都到位了:功能已完成。到了 beta 阶段,当我们进入后期制作时,我们通过添加或更改机制来平衡游戏的机会早已消失。我们游戏中的所有数字都已到位,希望这些数字的值已经使游戏相当平衡。我们在后期制作期间所做的任何平衡都将通过调整这些数字的值来完成,工作缓慢而谨慎。

Once we reach alpha, all the mechanisms of our game are in place: we’re feature complete. By beta, when we move into postproduction, the opportunity for us to balance our game by adding or changing mechanisms is long gone. All the numbers in our game are in place, and hopefully have values that already make the game pretty well balanced. Any balance that we do during postproduction will be done by tweaking the values of those numbers, working slowly and carefully.

当然,有些值我们在游戏结束时是无法改变的。正如我们在第 13 章中讨论的那样,如果你将玩家角色的跳跃高度降低哪怕一点点,角色都有可能无法到达游戏中他们必须跳跃到的壁架,整个游戏都可能崩溃。

Of course, there are some values that we can’t change toward the end of the game. As we discussed in chapter 13, if you decrease the height of a player-character’s jump by even a tiny amount, it’s possible that the character won’t be able to reach the ledges that they have to jump to in the game, and the entire game could break.

但有些数值的改变对游戏有利。例如,对动作游戏中控制角色移动和战斗互动的数字进行微小的改变,可以提高游戏难度,使其变得稍微容易或困难一些。对资源积累速度的微小改变可能会对战略游戏的节奏产生根本性影响。对叙事游戏中文本出现速度的微小改变可能有助于玩家浏览故事,并有助于强调剧情的展开。再次强调,希望您在整个开发过程中一直在调整这些数字。如果您必须进行重大更改,请在后期制作的早期进行,以便有时间发现任何不良后果。

But some values can be changed in a way that benefits the game. For example, small changes to the numbers governing the movement and combat interactions of characters in an action game could improve the difficulty of the game by making it ever so slightly easier or harder. Tiny changes to the rate at which resources accumulate could have a radical impact on the pacing of a strategy game. Small alterations to the speed at which the text appears in a narrative game might help the player navigate through the story and could help punctuate the unfolding events of the drama. Again, hopefully you’ve been dialing in these numbers all the way through development. If you must make major changes, make them early in postproduction, giving yourself time to spot any undesirable consequences.

在进行游戏平衡时,务必每次只进行一项更改,然后彻底测试游戏。如果您调整了两个值,然后看到一个您不喜欢的更改,您将无法确定该更改来自哪个调整。这通常是良好的游戏设计实践,即只进行一项更改然后测试游戏。在完整制作过程中构建游戏时并不总是能够始终如一地做到这一点,但随着后期制作的深入,进行一次更改然后进行测试就变得越重要。

When game balancing, it’s essential that you should only make one change at a time, and then thoroughly test the game. If you tweak two values, and then see a change that you don’t like, you won’t know for sure which tweak the change came from. This is good game design practice generally, to make just one change and then test the game. It’s not always possible to do this consistently when building out our game during full production, but the further we get through postproduction, the more important it becomes to make just one change, and then test it.

在游戏平衡过程中,很容易迷失在细节中,最终陷入原地踏步,做出微小的改变,然后又撤销它们。如果你发现自己有这个问题,可以寻求一些外部意见来帮助你保持正轨。你可能永远找不到适合你的游戏的完美平衡,但如果你在后期制作中留出一些时间来平衡,你就会增加接近完美的机会。如果你想了解更多关于这个主题的信息,杰西·谢尔在《游戏设计的艺术:一本镜头之书》提供了许多关于游戏平衡的优秀建议。6

It’s easy to get lost in the details during game balancing and end up going around in circles, making tiny changes and then undoing them. Get some outside input to help you stay on track if you find yourself with this problem. You might never find the perfect balance for your game, but if you leave yourself some time for balance during postproduction, you will increase your chances of getting close to perfection. If you want to read more about this subject, Jesse Schell offers lots of excellent advice about game balance in The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses.6

后期制作的特点

The Character of Postproduction

当我们进入后期制作阶段时,我们即将迎来一场马拉松的终点。我们可能筋疲力尽,一瘸一拐地走向终点线,并渴望尽快结束。但是,如果我们采用了健康的工作习惯,很好地规划了项目范围,并在整个开发过程中保持节奏,我们可能会感到疲惫,但仍然会有一些精力。重要的是,我们要尽一切努力让自己的电池保持电量,因为如果我们的游戏要取得成功,我们就需要在项目的最后阶段做出正确的决定。

As we enter postproduction, we’re getting close to the end of a marathon. We might be exhausted, limping toward the finish line, and keen to get it over with. But if we’ve adopted healthy working practices, have scoped our projects well, and have paced ourselves throughout development, we might be tired but still have some energy remaining. It’s important that we do everything we can to end up with some charge left in our batteries, because we need to be able to make good decisions in the closing stages of the project, if our game is going to turn out well.

我们在后期制作期间所做的工作至关重要。我喜欢将后期制作比作这样一个过程:我们建好了一座纸牌屋,现在正小心翼翼地把最后两张牌放在最上面。一个小错误就可能让一切都崩溃。如果我们做出的设计更改看似很小,但却对游戏体验产生了重大负面影响——如果我们在游戏发行前没有注意到这种负面影响——我们可能会遇到大麻烦。

The work we do during postproduction is crucially important. I like to think of postproduction as a time when, having built a house of cards, we are now carefully putting the last two cards on the very top. One small mistake could bring everything crashing down. If we make a design change that appears small but has a major negative impact on the experience of the game—and if we don’t notice the negative impact before we ship the game—we could be in big trouble.

即使是平时细心、有条不紊的人,在精疲力竭时也会犯错。这就是为什么在整个游戏项目过程中照顾好自己如此重要,通过获得足够的睡眠、锻炼和社交时间,通过健康饮食,以及做任何其他我们需要做的事情来茁壮成长。这样,在整个项目过程中保持健康的生活方式本身就是游戏设计工作的一部分,因为它为我们能够高效地制作出色的游戏创造了条件。

Even people who are usually careful and methodical can make mistakes when they’re exhausted. That’s why it’s so important to take care of ourselves throughout the whole course of a game project, by getting enough sleep, exercise, and social time, by eating healthily, and by doing whatever else we need to do to thrive. In this way, maintaining a healthy lifestyle throughout a project is itself a part of the work of game design, because it creates the conditions for us to be able to make great games in an efficient way.

视点的移动性

Mobility of Viewpoint

视点移动性是文学理论家和哲学家使用的一个概念,我发现它对游戏设计师很有帮助。7这个概念可以应用在很多方面,但本质上是能够作为观众或艺术家、演员或设计师在不同观点之间切换。不同的观点伴随着不同的模式、优先级、价值观和思维方式。

Mobility of viewpoint is a concept used by literary theorists and philosophers, which I find helpful as a game designer.7 The concept can be applied in many ways but is essentially to do with being able to switch between different points of view, as an audience member or artist, player or designer. Different points of view come with different modes, priorities, values, and ways of thinking.

当我作为一名游戏设计师思考视点的移动性时,我会想到:

When I think about mobility of viewpoint as a game designer, I think about:

  • 玩家对游戏的看法
  • The player’s view of the game
  • 设计师对整个游戏或游戏某一部分的宏观看法
  • The designer’s macroscopic view of the whole game, or a part of the game
  • 设计师对游戏某些细节的微观看法
  • The designer’s microscopic view of some detail of the game
  • 玩家角色对游戏发生的虚构世界的看法(或玩家角色的看法,如果有多个玩家角色)
  • The player-character’s view of the fictional world in which the game takes place (or the player-characters’ views, if there are multiple player-characters)
  • 游戏中其他角色对游戏世界的看法
  • The view of the game world held by the other characters in the game
  • 开发团队中某个特定学科的人对游戏的看法;例如,程序员或艺术家看待游戏的方式
  • The view of the game held by a particular discipline of the development team; for example, the way that a programmer or artist sees the game
  • 其他参与游戏开发的专业人士对游戏的看法;例如,参与游戏开发的营销人员和社区经理
  • The view of the game held by other professionals that will work on it; for example, the marketing people and community managers who will work on the game

我们可以继续延长这个列表,研究世界上许多不同的人如何看待游戏,以及游戏中的虚构角色如何看待他们的世界、他们自己、他们的目标、他们的价值观和他们的行为。根据我的经验,具有良好视角流动性的游戏开发者——能够在游戏的不同视角之间快速切换——通常能够创造性地做出贡献、解决问题并在非常高的水平上进行协作。视角流动性对于任何复杂、创造性、技术性的艺术形式所必需的跨学科合作非常重要。

We could keep extending this list for a long time, studying the ways that many different people in the world see the game, and the ways that the fictional characters inside the game see their world, themselves, their goals, their values, and their actions. It’s my experience that game developers who have good mobility of viewpoint—who are able to switch quickly between different perspectives on the game—are often able to contribute creatively, problem-solve, and collaborate at a very high level. Mobility of viewpoint is very important for the kind of cross-disciplinary collaboration essential for any complex, creative, technical art form.

视角的灵活性对于游戏导演来说尤其重要,因为他们必须不断地从宏观视角放大和缩小游戏的微观视角。他们必须从许多不同的专业角度看待游戏,必须从虚构角色的角度看待游戏世界,并且必须始终为玩家的体验而努力。如果游戏总监的职业道路是你的目标之一,那么请通过实践和讨论来培养你的观点灵活性。

Mobility of viewpoint is particularly important for game directors, who must constantly zoom in and out from a macroscopic to a microscopic view of the game. They must see the game from the point of view of many different professional specializations, must see the game world as the fictional characters see it, and must always be advocating for the experience of the player. If the career path of game director is among your goals, take steps to develop your mobility of viewpoint through practice and discussion.

开放的心态在某种程度上与观点的流动性同义,因此请尝试培养一种对不同观点甚至是矛盾观点持开放态度的心态。我发现我越累,就越不愿意接受新想法,有时是出于情感原因。我累坏了,我只想完成我的工作!你为什么要让我考虑不同的做事方式?这是我经常不得不冷静下来的反应。这又给了我们一个理由,让我们在整个项目过程中保持健康的工作,避免工作到精疲力竭。

Open-mindedness is in some ways synonymous with mobility of viewpoint, so try to cultivate a mindset that is open to different, and even contradictory, points of view. I find that the more tired I become, the less receptive I am to new ideas, sometimes for emotional reasons. I’m exhausted, and I just want to get my work done! Why are you asking me to consider a different way of doing things? is a reaction of mine that I’ve often had to cool down from. This gives us yet another reason to work healthily throughout the whole course of a project and to avoid ever working to exhaustion.

在后期制作期间,我们经常需要在游戏的不同视角之间快速切换。修复和复原单个 bug 时,我们可能需要从十几个不同的视角来看待游戏:玩家、编写 bug 的人、将 bug 传递给我们的人、需要我们帮助修复 bug 的人、需要我们帮助修复他们认为更重要的其他 bug 的人、首席制作人、游戏总监、产品经理、营销团队等等。我们在完善和平衡游戏时也需要这样做。

Postproduction is a time when we often have to switch very quickly between different views of the game. We might have to see the game from a dozen different points of view when we’re fixing and regressing a single bug: the player, the person who wrote the bug, the person who passed it to us, the person we need help from to fix it, the person who needs our help with a different bug that they think is more important, the lead producer, the game director, the product manager, the marketing team, and so on. The same goes for the work we do to polish and balance the game.

你的观点的灵活性将帮助你找到问题的最佳解决方案,促进团队成员之间的良好合作,并推动你的游戏在世界上的成功。

Your mobility of viewpoint will help you find the best solutions to problems, facilitate good collaboration between team members, and promote the success of your game in the world.

后期制作浪潮

Postproduction Waves

后期制作的一个有趣方面是我们停止游戏工作的方式。在一个大型团队中,不同学科的人会在不同时间完成项目工作,逐步分阶段或分批完成游戏。当然,如果团队中的每个人都在游戏的最后阶段,那么很有可能有人会引入一个在我们发布之前未被发现的问题。我们必须分批将人们从项目中调离,逐渐将工作交给越来越小的团队。

An interesting aspect of postproduction is the way that we stop working on the game. On a large team, different disciplines will finish work on the project at different times, gradually completing the game in stages or waves. Of course, if everyone on the team is touching the game up until the very end, there is a high probability that someone will introduce a problem that goes undetected before we ship. We have to move people off the project in waves, gradually handing off work to a smaller and smaller group of people.

根据我在大型团队工作的经验,这个过程是这样的。首先,在后期制作的“结束之初”设定一个里程碑。此时,必须修复与内容相关的所有错误。在这个里程碑上,几乎所有的艺术家、动画师、音频设计师和视觉效果艺术家都必须修复或关闭所有错误并停止游戏工作。最后几个棘手的错误将被传递给这些学科的负责人,他们将尽快修复它们。

In my experience of working on large teams, the process worked like this. First, a milestone is set at the “beginning of the end” of postproduction. At this time, all of the bugs related to content must be fixed. At that milestone, nearly all the artists, animators, audio designers, and visual effects artists have to fix or close all their bugs and stop working on the game. The last few gnarly bugs will be passed to the leads in these disciplines, who will fix them as quickly as they can.

此后不久,游戏设计师将面临一个里程碑,他们必须修复与事件脚本、不可见的“触发体积”、相机样条线或与所制作游戏风格相关的任何内容相关的错误。同样,游戏设计师必须在下一个里程碑之前修复或关闭他们的错误并停止游戏开发,任何棘手的最后修复都将由首席游戏设计师来解决。

Soon after that, a milestone is set for the game designers, who must finish fixing their bugs related to event scripting, invisible “trigger volumes,” camera splines, or whatever is relevant to the style of game being made. Again, the game designers must fix or close their bugs by this next milestone and stop working on the game, with any tough last fixes falling to the lead game designers to resolve.

在此期间,QA 将继续工作,对已修复的漏洞进行复原,并留意新漏洞的出现。最后一个里程碑留给程序员,他们要修复或关闭最后一个漏洞。最终,首席程序员将小心翼翼地完成我们游戏的纸牌屋,修复他们需要修复的最后一个漏洞。现在,该游戏已成为候选版本,并准备在发布之前进行最后一轮广泛测试。

QA will keep working throughout this time, regressing the bugs that have been claim-fixed, and watching out for the arrival of new bugs. The final milestone is left to the programmers, as they fix or close the last of their bugs. Eventually, the lead programmers will gingerly complete the house of cards that is our game, by fixing the last bug they need to fix. Now the game has become a release candidate and is ready for a final round of extensive testing before it can ship.

每次完成项目后,项目结束时,人们通常都会经历一段情感上的挣扎:我们处于不确定的状态,等待着另一只鞋子掉下来,渴望游戏完成,但现在却无法直接为其完成做出贡献。想想你生命中的某个时刻,你一直在等待一个你投入了大量精力的结果的消息,比如测试结果或孩子出生。有一种强烈的“完成但尚未完成”的感觉,让很多人感到焦虑和悬而未决。

There is often an emotional struggle lying in wait for the people who come off the project at the end of each of these waves of work: we’re in limbo, waiting for the other shoe to drop, eager for the game to be completed but now not able to contribute directly to its completion. Think of a time in your life when you’ve waited for news of an outcome that you’re deeply invested in, like a test result or a birth. There’s a strong feeling of “finished but not yet finished,” which for many feels agitated and unresolved.

也许,对于这种令人不安的感觉,我们能做的不多,只能忍受它,并记住,无论结果如何,我们都已经尽力了。现在是我们加倍关注健康和幸福的好时机,通过合理饮食、锻炼身体和进行其他类型的自我护理。这也是我们向朋友和家人求助的好时机。

Perhaps there is not much to do about this unnerving feeling but to tolerate it, and to remember that we did our best, however the game turns out. This is a good time to redouble our focus on health and well-being by eating right, exercising, and doing other kinds of self-care. It’s also a good time to turn toward our friends and family.

在整个游戏开发项目中,保持良好的精神状态非常重要,在后期制作过程中尤其重要,对于领导者来说更是如此。后期制作对整个团队来说可能既困难又有压力,但还有一些复杂的工作要做,坏情绪或争论会让这些工作变得更加困难。

It’s important to try and stay in good spirits throughout the whole game development project, and it’s particularly important during postproduction, doubly so for people in leadership positions. Postproduction can be difficult and stressful for the whole team, but there’s complex work left to do that will be made even more difficult by bad moods or arguments.

这并不意味着我们在感到焦虑或恼火时必须露出假笑。这确实意味着我们必须意识到我们的情绪对他人的影响。我们应该找到合适的时间和地点来发泄我们正在处理的任何困难情绪——也许可以和游戏团队以外的朋友或家人交谈。尽管后期制作可能非常困难,因为我们要努力完成游戏并使其达到我们想要的水平,但如果我们都努力保持积极的态度,工作就会容易一些。

That doesn’t mean we have to adopt a fake fixed grin when we’re feeling anxious or annoyed. It does mean we have to stay aware of the effect our moods have on others. We should find the right time and place to let out any difficult emotions that we’re working through—perhaps by talking to a friend or family member outside our game team. Even though postproduction can be very hard, as we struggle to finish the game and make it as excellent as we want it to be, if we all try to keep a positivistic outlook, the work will be a little easier.

在接下来的几章中,我们将讨论最终的里程碑 - 发布候选里程碑 - 并讨论在称为“认证”的过程中发布候选会发生什么。我们将研究在后期制作期间可能需要我们注意的一些其他事项,我们将看到当我们最终完成工作时,我们和我们的游戏可能发生什么。

In the next few chapters we’ll talk about the final milestone—the release candidate milestone—and we’ll discuss what happens to a release candidate in the process known as “cert.” We’ll look at some other things that might need our attention during postproduction, and we’ll see what might happen to us and to our game when we’ve finally finished working on it.

  1. 1. “色彩分级是改善图像外观的过程。……图像的各种属性(例如对比度、色彩、饱和度、细节、黑电平和白点)都可以得到增强。”“色彩分级”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading

  2. 1.  “Color grading is the process of improving the appearance of an image. Various attributes of an image such as contrast, color, saturation, detail, black level, and white point may be enhanced.” “Color Grading,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_grading.

  3. 2. “Picture Lock 是指……电影或电视节目剪辑的所有更改都已完成并获得批准。然后将其发送到流程的后续阶段,例如在线编辑和音频混合。”“Picture Lock”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_lock

  4. 2.  “Picture lock is when all changes to the film or television program cut have been done and approved. It is then sent to subsequent stages in the process, such as online editing and audio mixing.” “Picture Lock,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picture_lock.

  5. 3. Auriea Harvey 和 Michaël Samyn,《美丽的艺术计划》,《故事的故事》 ,2013 年 8 月 20 日,http://tale-of-tales.com/tales/BAP.html

  6. 3.  Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, “The Beautiful Art Program,” Tale of Tales, August 20, 2013, http://tale-of-tales.com/tales/BAP.html.

  7. 4. Brathwaite 和 Schreiber,《游戏设计师面临的挑战》,35。

  8. 4.  Brathwaite and Schreiber, Challenges for Game Designers, 35.

  9. 5. Ian Schreiber,“第 1 级:游戏平衡简介”,游戏平衡概念,2010 年 7 月 7 日,https://gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/level-1-intro-to-game-balance/

  10. 5.  Ian Schreiber, “Level 1: Intro to Game Balance,” Game Balance Concepts, July 7, 2010, https://gamebalanceconcepts.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/level-1-intro-to-game-balance/.

  11. 6. Schell,《游戏设计艺术》,211。

  12. 6.  Schell, The Art of Game Design, 211.

  13. 7. “塞德里克·沃茨认为,康拉德最复杂的小说《诺斯特罗莫》具有巨大的‘视点流动性’,涉及时间、空间、焦点和其他方面。”Childs,《现代主义》,85。

  14. 7.  “Cedric Watts characterises Conrad’s most complex novel, Nostromo, in terms of an enormous ‘mobility of viewpoint’, with regard to time, space, focalisation and other aspects.” Childs, Modernism, 85.

 

 

33 发布候选版本的里程碑

33    The Release Candidate Milestone

当我们最终制作出我们认为可以发布的游戏版本时,发布候选里程碑就到来了。我们已经修复了所有我们认为需要修复的错误,完成了所有有时间做的完善工作,并尽最大努力平衡了游戏。我们对游戏进行了彻底的测试,没有发现任何重大问题。现在我们准备对游戏进行最后一轮测试,以便我们批准它已准备好发布。实现发布候选里程碑有时被称为“进入白银阶段”——白银是黄金阶段之前的阶段。

The release candidate milestone comes when we finally make a build of the game that we believe could be ready for release. We’ve fixed all the bugs that we think we need to fix, we’ve completed all the polish that we had time to do, and we’ve balanced the game as best we can. We’ve tested the game thoroughly, and there aren’t any major problems that we’re aware of. We’re now ready to give the game one last round of testing, in order to give it our seal of approval as being ready for distribution. Achieving the release candidate milestone is sometimes known as “going silver”—silver being the stage before gold.

在本书中,我一直在告诉您,发布候选里程碑是数字游戏项目的最终里程碑。但这并不完全正确。发布软件是一个复杂的过程,就像后期制作阶段分阶段进行一样,项目结束时还有另一个里程碑隐藏在最后。一旦我们对发布候选进行了彻底的测试,它就会从银级变成金级;它将成为黄金主版本,我们就实现了黄金主里程碑(有时称为稳定版本或发布到制造版本)。

Throughout this book, I’ve been telling you that the release candidate milestone is the final milestone of a digital game project. But that’s not quite true. Releasing software is a complex process, and just like the postproduction phase took place in stages, the end of the project has another milestone hidden at the very end. Once we have tested the release candidate thoroughly, it is alchemically transmuted from silver to gold; it becomes the gold master build, and we have achieved the gold master milestone (sometimes known as the stable release or the release to manufacturing build).

金主版本得名于 90 年代早期使用的可刻录 CD-ROM 光盘,其中一些光盘呈金色,因为使用了有机染料或真正的金金属来使其可刻录。1游戏工作室或发行商会制作实体金主光盘,并将其发送到制造厂,复制到游戏商店出售的卡带、软盘或 CD-ROM 上。如今,我们只需点击几下鼠标即可通过互联网发送此信息,并可以在线分发。

The gold master build gets its name from the recordable CD-ROM discs used in the early ’90s, some of which were golden in color because of the organic dyes or actual gold metal used to make them writable.1 A physical gold master disc would be created at the game studio or publisher and sent to a manufacturing plant to be duplicated onto the cartridges, floppy discs, or CD-ROMs sold in game stores. Today, we can send this information over the Internet with a few mouse clicks and can distribute it online.

换句话说,在候选发布里程碑处,项目的程序员、主管和制作人都愿意离开并说:“好吧,我们认为游戏现在已经完成了。再进行一些测试,确保情况确实如此。然后我们就可以准备好发布我们的金牌大师了。”

In other words, at the release candidate milestone, the programmers, directors, and producers on the project are willing to step away and say, “Okay, we think the game is done now. Test it some more, and let’s make sure that’s the case. Then we’ll have our gold master, ready for release.”

发布候选版本需要什么?

What Is Needed for a Release Candidate?

从实际角度来说,对于游戏团队的工匠来说,候选发布版本是我们的数字游戏的一个版本:

In practical terms for the artisans on a game team, the release candidate is a version of our digital game that:

  • 功能和内容齐全
  • Is complete in terms of features and content
  • 对功能和内容都进行了一定的完善
  • Has had some polish time for both features and content
  • 花了一些时间进行游戏平衡
  • Has had some time for game balancing
  • 经过足够长时间的测试,我们有理由相信我们已经发现了所有重大错误
  • Has been in test long enough that we are reasonably confident we have discovered all of the significant bugs
  • 已修复并回退了游戏中无法发布的所有错误(以检查它们是否确实已修复)
  • Has had all of the bugs that the game couldn’t ship with fixed and regressed (to check that they are indeed fixed)
  • 已关闭我们决定不修复的错误
  • Has had the bugs closed that we’ve decided not to fix

最后这一点对很多读者来说可能听起来很奇怪甚至可怕。我们怎么能发布一款我们知道存在错误的游戏呢?我自己也反对这个想法很长时间了。作为一名关心自己制作的东西的高品质的游戏设计师,发布一款已知有错误的游戏的想法对我来说是令人厌恶的。

This last point will probably sound weird or even ghastly to many readers. How can we ship a game with bugs that we know exist? I rebelled against this idea for a long time myself. As a game designer who cares about the high quality of the things I make, the thought of shipping a game with known bugs was anathema to me.

但最终我不得不接受这是软件开发的现实。我们在这里谈论的 bug 类型并不是一定会对玩家体验造成问题的 bug — 这样的 bug 应该被修复。我们只应该关闭那些存在与否更多地取决于游戏主观体验的 bug。如果 bug 不会影响游戏玩法,并且许多玩家不会注意到它,那么我们可以考虑关闭它,特别是当我们没有时间修复 bug 并且还有更糟糕的 bug 需要修复时。

But eventually I had to accept this as a reality of software development. The kind of bugs we’re talking about here are not bugs that will definitely cause problems in the player’s experience—bugs like that should be fixed. We should only close bugs whose presence or absence is more of a judgment call about the subjective experience of the game. If a bug doesn’t affect gameplay, and if many players will not notice it, then we can consider closing it, especially if we’re running out of time to fix bugs and there are worse bugs left to fix.

我们还需要做其他事情来准备候选版本。请注意,这些事情可能是后期制作早期需要做的,也许是为了达到 Beta 里程碑:

There are other things that we need to do to prepare a release candidate build. Note these things may be required early during postproduction and maybe to meet the beta milestone:

  • 我们创建的调试菜单和任何快捷键组合都应从版本中删除。例如,开发人员经常内置菜单和快捷方式,以便在游戏中传送、使玩家角色无敌或提供无限资源,以及分析游戏的技术系统。
  • The debug menus and any shortcut key combinations that we’ve created should be removed from the build. For example, developers often build in menus and shortcuts to give the ability to teleport around the game, make the player-character invulnerable, or give unlimited resources, as well as to analyze the technical systems of the game.
  • 任何持久的屏幕调试读数(例如显示帧速率)都应从构建中删除。
  • Any persistent on-screen debug readouts (showing the frame rate, for example) should be removed from the build.
  • 如果尚未创建,则必须创建游戏认证流程所需的任何内容和功能,并且现在必须完成。我们将在第 34 章中详细讨论这一点。
  • Any content and features that will be required by the certification process for the game must be created, if they haven’t been already, and must now be finalized. We’ll discuss this in greater detail in chapter 34.

一旦我们准备好了候选版本,我们就可以进行更多的测试了。

Once we’ve prepared our release candidate, we’re ready to test it some more.

从候选版本到金牌大师版本

From Release Candidate to Gold Master

测试候选版本以使游戏项目获得金牌大师奖的过程非常严格。它需要制定复杂而全面的测试计划,需要大量熟练的质量保证人员,以及一些工程师、制作人以及团队的其他成员领导力。有时也需要艺术家、动画师、音频设计师和游戏设计师。

The process of testing a release candidate to take a game project to gold master is a rigorous one. It requires a complex and comprehensive test plan, a legion of skilled quality assurance people, and some engineers, producers, and other members of a team’s leadership. Sometimes artists, animators, audio designers, and game designers are needed as well.

就像侦探侦破棘手案件一样,QA 团队必须用鹰眼仔细检查构建版本,寻找漏洞。他们要找的是那些极少发生或只有当玩家在游戏中做出不寻常和意想不到的事情时才会出现的令人讨厌的隐藏漏洞。当然,所有这些都是常规 QA 实践的一部分,但在 QA 测试的最后阶段,它变得更加重要。

Like detectives on a difficult case, the QA team must comb the build with an eagle eye, looking for bugs. They’re after nasty, hidden bugs that happen only rarely or that only occur when the player does something unusual and unexpected in the game. Of course, all this is part of regular QA practice, but it becomes even more important here in the final phase of QA testing.

QA 将执行“浸泡测试”,让游戏连续几天处于运行但闲置状态,以确保它不会崩溃。他们将最后一次检查游戏可能性空间的每个部分,以确保一切都存在且正确。他们将确保游戏符合发行商或平台持有者颁发的认证要求,我们将在下一章中讨论这一点。

QA will perform “soak tests,” leaving the game running but idle for days on end, looking to make sure it doesn’t crash. They’ll check over every part of the possibility space of the game one last time to make sure that everything is present and correct. They’ll make sure that the game is going to meet the certification requirements issued by the publisher or platform holder, which we’ll discuss in the next chapter.

如果发现任何问题,团队领导将开会讨论这些问题,并确定问题是否严重到需要冒险对候选版本进行更改。正如我们在前几章中讨论的那样,每次我们对游戏进行更改时,我们都会冒着无意中引入新问题的风险。一些 QA 部门会在每次对代码进行更改时将候选版本测试时钟重置为零,重新开始整个过程​​。

If any problems are discovered, the team’s leadership will meet to discuss them and to see whether the problems are severe enough to risk making changes to the release candidate. As we’ve discussed throughout the previous chapters, every time we make a change to the game, we run the risk of inadvertently introducing new problems. Some QA departments will set the release candidate testing clock back to zero every time a single change is made to the code, starting the whole process over again.

通过这种方式,我们艰苦努力,终于完成了金牌主版本。当然,资源有限的小团队会发现项目的这个阶段非常具有挑战性。有些游戏 QA 工作室可以帮助团队外包这一负担,但没有预算的团队将不得不自己进行测试。

In this way, we make our painstaking progress toward a gold master build. Of course, small teams with limited resources can find this stage of a project very challenging. There are game QA studios that can help teams outsource the burden, but teams without a budget will have to do their own testing.

专业团队应以适合团队资源和资金的方式,完成从发布候选到金牌大师的整个过程。学术环境中的游戏项目是否应该一路晋升到金牌大师,还是在发布候选阶段就被视为已完成,这仍是一个悬而未决的问题。在我看来,最长一个学期的较短的学术游戏项目可以在发布候选里程碑时被视为已完成,但用作论文项目或顶点项目的一年期项目应该晋升到金牌大师,因为从该过程的最后阶段获得的学习是宝贵的和专业化的。当然,任何在商业平台上发布作品作为课程一部分的学生团队都将他们的项目带到金牌大师,并且可能也必须经过认证过程。

Professional teams should go through the process of taking their game from release candidate to gold master in a way that’s appropriate for the team’s resources and funding. There’s an open question about whether game projects in academic settings should be taken all the way to gold master or can be considered finished at the release candidate stage. In my opinion, shorter academic game projects of up to a semester in length can be considered finished at the release candidate milestone, but yearlong projects used as thesis projects or capstone projects should be taken to gold master, since the learning that comes from the very last stage of the process is valuable and professionalizing. Of course, any student teams that publish their work on a commercial platform as part of their coursework will take their projects to gold master and may have to go through a certification process too.

发布游戏

Releasing the Game

一旦我们为候选版本颁发了健康证明,我们就可以认为自己已经达到了黄金大师里程碑,我们可以进入发布游戏的下一个阶段。如果我们在自己的网站上或通过完全由我们自己控制的其他方法发布游戏,那么我们就可以继续发布它,让它可供下载。

Once we have given the release candidate a clean bill of health, we can consider ourselves to have reached the gold master milestone, and we can move toward the next stage of releasing our game. If we’re releasing our game on our own website or by some other method that is entirely under our own control, then we can just go ahead and release it by making it available for download.

如果我们要在 Steam 或 Google Play 商店等服务上发布游戏,则需要经过一个简短的申请和批准流程,并且可能需要支付费用。平台所有者将检查我们的游戏,然后批准其发行或拒绝将我们的应用托管在他们的服务上。

If we are releasing our game on a service like Steam or the Google Play store, there will be a short process of application and approval to go through, and maybe a fee to be paid. The platform holders will check over our game and will either approve it for distribution or deny our application to be hosted on their service.

即使我们不在游戏机上发布游戏,发布游戏也不只是将其放在网上那么简单。如果我们希望人们发现我们的游戏,我们就需要推广它。我们将在第 35 章中进一步讨论这一点。

Even if we’re not putting our game out on console, releasing a game is not as simple as just putting it up online. We need to promote our game if we want people to discover it. We’ll talk about this some more in chapter 35.

  1. 1. “CD-R”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R

  2. 1.  “CD-R,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-R.

 

 

34 认证流程

34    The Certification Process

如果我们要为索尼、微软或任天堂等平台持有者制作的游戏机开发游戏,或者要在 Apple 生态系统的移动平台上发布游戏,则需要通过认证流程才能在该平台上发布游戏。这也称为提交流程、合规性测试或通过认证。

If we are creating a game for a game console made by a platform holder like Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo, or that is to be released on a mobile platform in the Apple ecosystem, we will need to pass a certification process before we can release our game on that platform. This is also known as a submission process, compliance testing, or passing cert.

在第 7 章中,我们讨论了如何成为此类硬件平台的开发者。当我们被平台持有者批准成为其平台的开发者时,我们将收到一份要求列表,我们的游戏必须满足这些要求才能在该平台上发布。这些要求包括:

In chapter 7, we talked about becoming a developer for this type of hardware platform. When we have been approved by a platform holder as a developer for their platform, we will receive a list of requirements that our game has to meet before it can be released on the platform. These include:

  • 技术要求、游戏如何使用平台的硬件和软件库,包括屏幕分辨率和刷新率、光盘或驱动器访问速度的考虑以及处理器如何寻址。
  • Technical requirements, how the platform’s hardware and software libraries are used by the game, including considerations of screen resolution and refresh rate, disc or drive access speed, and how the processors are addressed.
  • 质量控制,游戏必须无错误且具有良好的界面可用性的程度。
  • Quality control, the degree to which the game must be bug-free and have good interface usability.
  • 安全性指的是防止游戏被复制和保护用户隐私的机制。
  • Security in terms of the mechanisms that prevent a game from being copied and that preserve user’s privacy.
  • 内容、是否允许某些图像、声音和主题,以及游戏如何处理多种语言。
  • Content, whether certain imagery, sounds, and subject matter are permitted, how the game handles multiple languages.
  • 成就等游戏系统的实现必须符合一定的标准和惯例。
  • The implementation of gameplay systems like achievements, which must meet certain standards and conventions.
  • 品牌、公司和游戏系统的标识如何使用和修改,包括与游戏控制器相关的图像。
  • Branding, how the logos of the company and game system may be used and modified, including imagery related to the game controller.
  • 在平台持有者的网上商店销售游戏所需的资产:文本、图像、电影和图标。
  • Assets needed to sell the game in the platform holder’s online store: text, images, movies, and icons.
  • 内容评级,我们将在本章末尾讨论。
  • Content ratings, which we’ll discuss toward the end of this chapter.
  • 本地化要求取决于游戏在世界哪个地方发布。
  • Localization requirements, depending on where in the world the game will be released.
  • 定价:游戏出售时的价格。
  • Pricing: how much the game will cost when it’s sold.

认证要求文件通常包含数百个详细要求,游戏发布前必须满足这些要求。每家公司都有一套不同的认证要求,以及不同的名称。在 Sony PlayStation,它们被称为 TRC,即“技术要求清单”。对于 Microsoft Xbox,它们被称为 TCR,即“技术认证要求”。任天堂的认证系统称为 LotCheck 流程。这些在一般情况下都很相似,但在细节上有很大差异 - 例如,在处理玩家数据、多人游戏和成就等方面。如果您同时为多个平台开发游戏,则必须详细研究认证要求,并设计您的游戏以解决这些差异。

The certification requirements document usually includes several hundred detailed requirements which must be met before the game can be released. Every company has a different set of certification requirements and a different name for them. At Sony PlayStation, they are called TRCs, for “technical requirements checklist.” For the Microsoft Xbox they are called TCRs, for “technical certification requirements.” Nintendo’s certification system is known as the LotCheck process. These are all similar in general terms but have major differences in detail—for example, in terms of how they handle things like player data, multiplayer, and achievements. If you’re developing for multiple platforms at once you must study the certification requirements in detail and architect your game to account for the differences.

请注意,对于大多数公司来说,这里实际上有两个并行的流程:一个专注于游戏开发的技术流程,以及一个专注于将游戏推向市场的发布流程。正如 Tracy Fullerton 提醒我的那样:“它们是截然不同的两件事,发生在两个不同的时间线上,发布/营销开始得更早,技术工作最后​​才开始。然后在最后,发布工作又回来接管发布前的新闻工作,然后是实际的发货。”所以请记住,你可能需要与平台持有者公司的两个不同部门打交道,一个负责开发,一个负责发布。

Be aware that, for most companies, there are actually two parallel processes here: a technical process focused on game development, and a publishing process focused on bringing your game to market. As Tracy Fullerton reminded me: “They are very different beasts and happen on two different timelines, with the publishing/marketing starting earlier and the technical coming in at the end. Then at the very end, publishing comes back and takes over for the pre-launch press effort and then actual shipping.” So keep in mind that you will probably need to engage with two different divisions of the platform holder’s company, one for development and one for publishing.

认证流程时间表

The Certification Process Timeline

游戏工作室在获得开发者资格批准后,会收到认证要求列表。为了第一次就通过认证(或者说,彻底通过认证),他们必须在整个游戏开发过程中研究这些要求。越早开始越好。从项目开始,从预生产阶段开始,开发者就应该对认证要求有一个很好的总体了解。全面生产阶段是开始详细研究认证要求的好时机,在 alpha 阶段就应该清楚地理解这些要求。

The game studio receives the list of certification requirements when they are approved as a developer. In order to pass cert first time—or indeed, at all—they must study the requirements throughout their game’s development. The earlier they get started on this, the better. The developer should have a good general understanding of the certification requirements from the beginning of the project, starting in the preproduction phase. The full production phase is a good time to begin studying the certification requirements in detail, and they should be clearly understood by alpha.

当开发者确信他们的候选版本已经过全面测试,并且不存在阻碍其通过认证流程的问题时,他们会填写一些文件并将其提交给平台持有者。然后,平台持有者将游戏放入测试和评估流程,以确保其符合认证要求。

When a developer is confident that their release candidate build has been thoroughly tested and is free of problems that would prevent it from passing the certification process, they fill out some paperwork and submit it to the platform holder. The platform holder then puts the game into the testing and evaluation process, to make sure that it complies with the certification requirements.

在游戏提交技术认证流程的同时,开发者将与平台持有者的发行部门合作,将游戏设置在其数字发行店面。这一时间必须经过仔细规划,并纳入游戏的发布计划,这反过来会影响游戏通过营销和社交媒体吸引潜在受众的时间表。例如,只有在游戏通过认证后,才能为媒体和评论者生成促销代码,以帮助为游戏制造热议。

Around the same time that the game is being submitted to the technical certification process, the developer will be working with the publishing division of the platform holder to get their game set up on its digital distribution storefront. The timing of this must be carefully planned and figured into the release plan for the game, which in turn affects the timeline along which the potential audience for the game is engaged using marketing and social media. For example, only after a game has passed cert can promo codes be generated for press and reviewers to help create buzz about the game.

通过和未通过证书

Passing and Failing Cert

认证流程的最佳结果是平台持有者没有发现任何阻碍游戏通过认证的问题。然后,该游戏被判定符合认证要求,并真正“获得黄金级认证”。它可以被移交给最终发布流程。

The best outcome of the certification process is that the platform holder doesn’t find any problems that prevent the game from passing cert. The game is then judged to be compliant with the certification requirements and has truly “gone gold.” It can be handed over to the process that will lead to its release.

如果平台持有者只发现一个主要问题(或几个小问题),那么通常游戏就无法通过认证。平台持有者将停止测试游戏并将其从认证流程中剔除,并将其连同问题描述一起发回给开发者。如果游戏开发者想继续尝试在该平台上发布游戏,他们将不得不修复问题,可能要支付(可能非常大的)费用让他们的游戏再次通过认证流程,然后重新提交。如果一款游戏包含几个主要问题,并且在发现第一个问题时被剔除认证,那么如果开发者在重新提交之前没有发现其他问题,那么这款游戏可能会陷入困境。

If the platform holder finds just one major problem (or a handful of small problems), then usually the game has failed cert. The platform holder will stop testing the game and kick it out of the cert process, sending it back to the developer with a description of the problem. If the game developer wants to continue attempting to publish on the platform, they will have to fix the problem, possibly pay a (potentially very large) fee to have their game put through the certification process again, and resubmit. If a game contains several major problems and gets kicked out of cert when the first problem is discovered, the game might be in trouble if the developer doesn’t find the other problems before they resubmit.

开发人员应尽一切努力避免认证失败。认证需要时间:通常至少需要一周的时间进行严格的测试和评估。这意味着,如果我们必须进行两到三次认证,我们很容易就会错过预计的发布日期一个月,这在现代媒体消费和观众关注的领域中是一个永恒的时间。

Developers should do everything that they can to avoid failing cert. Cert takes time: usually at least a week for the rigorous process of testing and evaluation. That means that if we have to go through cert two or three times, we could easily miss our projected release date by a month, which is an eternity in the landscape of modern media consumption and audience attention.

通过认证后更新游戏

Updating Games after Passing Cert

游戏开发者经常需要“修补”他们的游戏。补丁是对游戏构建的某些部分或整个游戏的替换和更新。游戏补丁用于修复问题,有时也用于更新以添加内容和功能。实时运营游戏(作为持续服务而非一次性销售产品运营的游戏)必须不断进行修补和更新。

Game developers often need to “patch” their games. A patch is the replacement and updating of either some part of the build of the game or the whole game. Games are patched to fix problems and sometimes to make an update that adds content and features. Live operations games—games that operate as an ongoing service rather than as a one-time-sale product—must constantly be patched and updated.

对于大多数平台持有者来说,并不是每个后续补丁都需要单独通过认证。通常有一个独立于(但类似于)第一个和主要认证过程的过程,一旦通过,开发人员就可以在一定程度上自由地修补他们的游戏。

For most platform holders, not every successive patch needs to pass cert separately. There is usually a process separate from (but similar to) the first and main certification process that, once passed, will allow a developer to patch their game with a certain degree of freedom.

内容分级

Content Ratings

根据游戏发行地的不同,游戏可能需要获得内容分级才能发布。内容分级表示游戏适合特定年龄组,由每个地区的分级委员会发布。如果你拥有数字游戏的实体副本,你会习惯在盒子上看到内容分级:加拿大、墨西哥和美国的 ESRB 分级、欧洲的 PEGI 分级以及世界各地的许多其他组织发布的分级世界。1然而,大多数游戏机平台持有者现在都转向使用国际年龄分级联盟,以降低成本和复杂性。2

Depending on the region of the world where a game is being released, it might be required to receive a content rating before it can be published. The content rating indicates that the game is appropriate for certain age groups and is issued by the ratings board for each region. If you own physical copies of digital games, you’re used to seeing content ratings on the box: they’re issued by the ESRB in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, by PEGI in Europe, and by many other organizations around the world.1 However, most of the console platform holders are now moving toward use of the International Age Rating Coalition in order to reduce cost and complexity.2

获得内容分级的过程与认证过程是分开的,但有些相似。游戏提交给发行,有时还要收费。(评级委员会通常隶属于政府和该地区的数字游戏贸易协会。)然后审查游戏并指定评级。评级可能包括年龄类别和一些内容描述符,说明游戏包含哪些类型的内容。如果开发商和/或发行商没有收到他们想要的内容评级,可以对游戏进行更改并重新提交,或者可以对评级决定提出上诉。

The process of receiving a content rating is separate from the cert process but is somewhat similar to it. The game is submitted to the ratings board for the region of release, sometimes alongside a fee. (Ratings boards are typically affiliated with the government and the digital games trade association for the region.) The game is then reviewed, and a rating is assigned. The rating might include both an age category and some content descriptors that say what kind of content the game contains. If the developer and/or publisher doesn’t receive the content rating they wanted, changes can be made to the game and it can be resubmitted, or the rating decision can be appealed.

在世界许多地区,内容分级是可选的,并非每款在线发布的游戏都需要获得官方内容分级。但是,大多数在游戏机上发布的游戏都需要根据平台持有者的认证要求获得内容分级,并且必须在进入认证流程之前完成。游戏在发布过程中可能会经历许多不同的内容分级系统和认证流程,处理由此产生的问题可能很困难,而这正是游戏发行商可以为游戏开发商提供巨大帮助的领域之一。

In many regions of the world, content ratings are optional, and not every game released online needs to receive an official content rating. However, most games released on a game console will be required to receive a content rating by the platform holder’s certification requirements and must do so before they are put into the certification process. It can be difficult to deal with the issues arising from the many different content ratings systems and certification processes that a game might go through on its journey to release, and this is one of the areas where game publishers can offer great assistance to game developers.

一些认证要求示例

Some Example Certification Requirements

Jesse Vigil 是一名作家、游戏设计师、电影制作人、企业家和教育家,在南加州大学游戏课程中任教。他开发了一套以游戏行业使用的认证要求为蓝本的示例认证要求。我们的学生在课堂上制作游戏时遵守这些要求,以便让他们在专业环境中体验“获得金牌”的严格要求。

Jesse Vigil is a writer, game designer, filmmaker, entrepreneur, and educator who teaches in the USC Games program. He developed a set of example certification requirements modeled after those used in the game industry. Our students comply with these requirements when making games in our classes, in order to introduce them to the rigors of “going gold” in a professional setting.

Jesse 的认证要求对于每个游戏开发者学习如何完成一款游戏来说都是一个宝贵的工具,我经他许可在图 34.1中重现了这些要求。由于其中一些与 Beta 里程碑有关,因此最迟应在 alpha 阶段将它们提供给开发团队。Jesse 和我希望您觉得它们有用。

Jesse’s cert requirements are a valuable tool for every game developer when learning how to finish a game, and I reproduce them in figure 34.1 with his permission. Since some of them relate to the beta milestone, they should be given to the development teams by alpha at the latest. Jesse and I hope that you find them useful.

图 34.1

Figure 34.1

因为通过认证是一项非常注重细节的工作,处理认证的游戏开发者需要敏锐而精准,能够清晰地沟通流程的每个方面。一些开发团队和发行商会聘请认证专家,他们非常了解认证要求,并帮助许多游戏通过认证流程,还有一些公司提供相同的服务。通过认证是每个游戏开发者的必经仪式,虽然它可能具有挑战性,但它也带来了许多学习机会。祝你好运!

Because passing cert is such a detail-oriented business, the game developers handling it need to be sharp and on point, able to communicate with crystal clarity about every aspect of the process. Some development teams and publishers employ certification experts who know the requirements well and have helped shepherd many games through the cert process, and there are also companies that provide the same service. Passing cert is a rite of passage for every game developer, and while it can be challenging, it brings with it many opportunities for learning. Good luck!

即使我们通过了认证,我们也还没有完全完成。在项目的最后,游戏设计师通常还有一些额外的工作要做。我们将在下一章中讨论这个问题。

Even when we’ve passed cert, we’re not quite done. There is usually some extra work lying in wait for game designers at the very end of a project. We’ll look at that in the next chapter.

  1. 1. “电子游戏内容分级系统”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_content_rating_system

  2. 1.  “Video Game Content Rating System,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_content_rating_system.

  3. 2. “国际年龄分级联盟”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Age_Rating_Coalition

  4. 2.  “International Age Rating Coalition,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Age_Rating_Coalition.

 

 

35 意想不到的游戏设计

35    Unexpected Game Design

游戏设计师的创作之旅充满了惊喜,有些是令人高兴的,比如游戏元素之间意想不到的协同作用,有些则不那么好,比如难以修复的错误。在整个项目过程中,包括最后阶段,我们不断发现有关游戏、玩家、流程和任务的信息。游戏设计师在后期制作和发布候选里程碑之后通常需要做一些意想不到的工作:这些工作突然出现在你面前,需要你去做。本章旨在帮助你避免因游戏设计师在项目结束时意外承担的职责而措手不及。

The creative journey of a game designer is full of surprises, some of them happy, like unexpected synergies between elements of our gameplay, and some not so great, like hard-to-fix bugs. We continue to make discoveries about our game, our players, our processes, and our tasks throughout the whole course of a project, including at the very end. There’s usually some unanticipated work for game designers to do both during postproduction and after the release candidate milestone: work that comes out of the blue and lands in your lap, demanding to be done. This chapter is intended to help you avoid being caught unawares by the unexpected end-of-project duties of a game designer.

当我们的游戏准备好与世界见面时,我们面临的任务会千差万别,这取决于我们制作的游戏类型、制作游戏的背景(商业、艺术、学术或其他)、游戏的发布方式、潜在受众的规模和性质等等。我会向你指出你可能需要做的一些一般性工作,但你必须对周围的世界保持警惕。游戏周围的文化、商业和媒体格局在不断变化——而且变化非常快。为了你自己和你的游戏,不要让自己陷入懒惰。

The tasks that creep up on us as we get our game ready to meet the world will vary wildly depending on what kind of game we are making, the context in which we are making it (commercial, artistic, academic, or some other), the way our game will be released, the size and nature of our potential audience, and so on. I’ll point you toward some general categories of work you might need to do, but you will have to stay alert to the world around you. The cultural, commercial, and media landscape around games is constantly changing—and changes very quickly. Don’t be caught snoozing, for your own sake and for the sake of your game.

意想不到的游戏设计类型

Types of Unexpected Game Design

游戏设计师们意想不到的工作大多与游戏的发布和推广有关。我们希望人们下载、购买或以其他方式体验我们的游戏,而要实现这一点,我们和我们的合作者都需要付出一些努力。

Much of the work that takes game designers by surprise relates to the release and promotion of our game. We want people to download, buy, or otherwise experience our game, and making that happen is going to take some effort on our part and on the part of our collaborators.

我们已经在第 30 章中讨论过这个问题,希望你已经制定了计划,以便找到可能想要玩你制作的游戏的人并与他们进行沟通。但是,如果你是游戏发行和推广方面的新手,那么作为游戏设计师和开发者,你必须参与的一些工作可能会让你措手不及。这可能包括:

We already discussed this in chapter 30, and hopefully you’ve got a plan in place for finding and communicating with the people who might want to play what you’ve made. However, if you’re new to releasing and promoting games, some of the work you’ll have to get involved in as a game designer and developer might catch you on the hop. This could include:

  • 帮助制作您的游戏预告片。您可能需要提供游戏和故事内容的原始镜头以及关键艺术资产。您甚至可能需要自己制作预告片。制作一部好的游戏预告片需要时间。
  • Helping to make trailers for your game. You may need to provide raw footage of gameplay and story-based content, and key art assets. You might even have to make the trailer yourself. Creating a good game trailer takes time.
  • 帮助提交游戏以获得内容评级。即使此过程由第三方处理,游戏开发商通常也需要做一些工作来准备游戏以供提交。
  • Helping to submit the game to receive a content rating. Even when this process is handled by a third party, there is usually work for the game developers to do to prepare the game for submission.
  • 为您的游戏构建和测试演示。发行演示版既具有挑战性又耗时,就像发行完整版游戏一样。如果您的游戏需要通过认证和内容分级流程,演示版可能也必须通过。
  • Building and testing demos for your game. Shipping a demo is challenging and time-consuming in many of the same ways that shipping a full game is challenging. If your game is required to pass a cert and content-rating process, the demo might have to as well.
  • 为该游戏创建一个网站。与预告片一样,您可能必须为网站提供资产和信息,或者您可能必须自己制作游戏网站。
  • Make a website for the game. As with a trailer, you may have to provide assets and information for the website, or you might have to make your game’s website yourself.
  • 宣传项目管理。与媒体和外界沟通并协调游戏宣传的过程可能非常耗时。专业公关人员可以承担这项工作,但如果您没有足够的预算聘请公关人员,您可能需要自己通过联系媒体和有影响力的人以及组织公共活动来宣传您的游戏。
  • Publicity project management. Running the process of communicating and coordinating with the press and the wider world about your game can be very time-consuming. Professional publicists can take on this work, but if you don’t have the budget to pay someone to do it, you may have to publicize your game yourself by reaching out to the press and influencers and by organizing public events.
  • 管理社交媒体账户。为游戏的社交媒体渠道创建高质量的内容可能非常耗时。您还应该考虑制定与受众进行社交媒体互动的短期和长期计划所需的时间。
  • Managing social media accounts. Creating top-quality content for your game’s social media channels can be surprisingly time-consuming. You should also factor in the time it takes to develop both short- and long-term plans for your social media engagement with your audience.
  • 接受游戏媒体的采访。如果你能吸引媒体的关注,你接受的关于游戏的采访可以极大地增加你的观众。这些采访可能通过电子邮件或私人消息进行,也可能用音频或摄像机录制。无论哪种情况,它们都需要时间才能做好。
  • Interviews with the games press. If you’re able to attract attention from the press, the interviews you give about your game can do a great job of growing your audience. These interviews might be conducted through email or private messaging, or they might be recorded with audio or on camera. In every case, they take time to do well.
  • 准备向新闻界发表的演讲。除了撰写或录制采访内容所需的时间外,您还需要花时间准备谈话要点,以便有精彩的内容可讲。您还需要准备屏幕截图、视频和关键图片,以便与采访内容一起发布。
  • Preparing presentations for the press. In addition to the time it takes to write or record an interview, it will take time to prepare your talking points so that you have something good to say. You will also need to prepare screenshots, videos, and key art to be published alongside your interview.
  • 协助创建策略指南。许多游戏(尤其是商业游戏)都会创建攻略指南,以帮助玩家了解游戏玩法并充当补充内容。这些攻略指南可能以印刷版或电子书形式出售,或在网上免费提供。它们需要时间来创建,并且通常需要游戏设计师和开发人员的大量投入。如果您将与攻略指南的作者合作,请确保在您的日程安排中留出时间进行沟通并关注所需的细节。
  • Helping to create the strategy guide. Many games—especially commercial games—create strategy guides to help players figure out how to play and to act as supplementary content. These might be sold in print or e-book form or made available for free on the web. They take time to create and usually require a lot of input from the game’s designers and developers. If you will be collaborating with the author of a strategy guide, make sure to build time into your schedule for the communication and attention to detail it will take.
  • 为短片和游戏奖励材料制作“制作过程”纪录片。十多年来,游戏一直包含可解锁的“制作花絮”材料,而关于游戏制作的短篇纪录片也越来越受欢迎。准备和录制这些纪录片中的开发者访谈需要时间,而策划、拍摄、编辑和润色影片本身则需要更多时间。
  • Creating “making of” documentaries for short films and in-game bonus materials. Games have included in-game unlockable “making of” bonus materials for more than a decade now, and short-form documentaries about the making of games have risen in popularity. It takes time to prepare for and record the developer interviews that go into these documentaries, and even more time to plan, shoot, edit, and polish the films themselves.
  • 在博览会上展示并进行新闻巡回。公共游戏博览会是独立开发者和大公司推广游戏的重要场所。准备、前往并在博览会上展示您的游戏既昂贵又耗时,而且很累,所以请提前做好计划。如果您是一名游戏开发者,并且拥有大量的营销预算,您可能会被派去参加新闻发布会,与记者交谈并出现在媒体上,一路传播有关您的游戏的信息。
  • Showing at expos and doing press tours. Public game expos are an important venue for game promotion for both indie developers and large companies. Preparing for, traveling to, and showing your game at an expo is expensive, time-consuming, and tiring, so plan well ahead. If you are a developer working on a game with a large marketing budget, you may get sent out on a press tour where you talk to journalists and appear in the media, spreading the message about your game as you go.
  • 将你的游戏提交到节日活动。有许多很棒的游戏节,迎合各种各样的游戏。除了在游戏节上展示游戏的乐趣和荣誉之外,它们还可以帮助游戏与潜在观众建立联系,我们在游戏网站上看到的荣誉可以帮助吸引人们对游戏的关注。根据您要提交的游戏节的提交截止日期,您可能会发现自己在努力“完成”游戏的同时,忙着整理大多数游戏节提交所需的大量内容。
  • Submitting your game to festivals. There are many great game festivals, catering to a wide diversity of games. Aside from the fun and the honor of having your game featured in a game festival, they can help a game connect with its potential audience, and the laurels that we see on a game’s website can help attract attention to a game. Depending on when the submission deadlines are for the festivals you want to submit to, you might find yourself scrambling to put together the large volume of content that most festival submissions require at the same time as you are trying to “final” your game.
  • 向会议提交有关你的游戏的论文和演讲。无论是在行业还是学术界,会议演讲和提交的论文都是分享您在游戏创作过程中获得的知识的地方,而不是推广您的游戏的地方。但是,就像节日一样,根据会议提交的截止日期,您可能会发现自己在以为已经完成时手头有意外的工作。
  • Submitting papers and talks about your game to conferences. Conference talks and submitted papers, whether in industry or academia, are a place to share the knowledge you gained in the process of creating your game, rather than being places to promote your game. However, as with festivals, depending on when the conference submissions are due, you might find yourself with unexpected work on your hands just when you thought you were done.

您可能认为我在这里描述的很多内容都不是游戏设计,而是营销或公关。严格来说,这可能是真的,但正如您对这项工作的描述所见,很多时候,公关和营销方面的合作者需要开发团队的投入才能完成这些重要的推广任务。在预算有限的小型开发团队中,团队本身可能必须完成这项工作。

You might think that much of what I’m describing here isn’t game design, it’s marketing or PR. That may be true, strictly speaking, but as you can tell from my description of this work, very often, your collaborators in PR and marketing will need input from the development team to carry out these important promotional tasks. On a small development team with a limited budget, the team themselves may well have to do the work.

在第 30 章中,我提到了 Amy Hennig 的观点(我也有同感),即玩家的游戏体验从他们第一次意识到游戏的那一刻开始。他们的体验受到他们从宣传材料或媒体中获得的信息和情感的影响。因此,这种工作实际上是游戏设计的一个方面——与游戏本身一样,是设计体验的一部分。因此,它受益于创造游戏的热情开发者的触动,他们与营销和公关方面的专家同事密切合作。

In chapter 30, I mentioned Amy Hennig’s belief (which I share) that the player’s experience of the game begins the moment that player first becomes aware of the game. Their experience is shaped by the information and emotion that they get from the promotional materials or press. So this kind of work is actually an aspect of game design—as much a part of the designed experience as the game itself. As such, it benefits from the touch of the passionate developers who are creating the game, working in close collaboration with their expert colleagues in marketing and PR.

项目结束后,可能还有其他意想不到的游戏设计工作等着你。也许你会有机会与非营利组织合作,对社会产生积极影响。也许你会被要求在政府会议上介绍你的游戏。在娱乐、艺术和商业领域,一切皆有可能。如果你培养自己的游戏设计实践、个人品格和价值观,你将能够顺利应对任何可能遇到的问题。

There might be other kinds of unexpected game design work lying in wait for you at the end of your project. Maybe you’ll get an opportunity to work with nonprofits and have a positive impact on society. Perhaps you’ll be called on to address a government assembly about your game. In the worlds of entertainment, art, and business, anything is possible. If you cultivate your game design practice, your character as a person, and your values, you will be able to steer a good course through whatever comes your way.

在第 2 章中,我谈到了“列表的力量”。游戏设计师们会记录列表并及时更新,他们拥有一种超能力,当游戏设计出乎意料时,出现这种情况时,超能力就会被激活。你不必花费数十个小时来收集一些意外要求的信息,你只需制作一份清单并将其交给对方即可。

In chapter 2, I talked about “the power of the list.” Game designers who keep lists and keep them up to date have a kind of superpower, and when unexpected game design comes along, that superpower gets activated. Instead of having to do dozens of hours of work to compile some information that’s unexpectedly been requested, you might just be able to produce your list and hand it over.

现在我们有了候选版本,通过了认证流程,并处理了一些意想不到的游戏设计,我们的游戏制作过程已经接近尾声。下一章将讨论结束之后的事情,届时我们将发布游戏并提供支持,然后继续进行未来的项目。

Now that we have a release candidate, have passed through the certification process, and have dealt with some unexpected game design, we are very nearly finished in our playful production process. The next chapter will talk about what comes after the end, as we release our game and support it, and move on to future projects.

 

 

36 完成后

36    After We’ve Finished

有时,当一款游戏完成后,游戏开发者可以放松一下,至少可以放松一段时间。大多数情况下,当一款游戏完成并发布后,它就会立即要求其创作者投入更多工作。无论哪种情况,另一个项目也可能会开始。本章将介绍我们在完成后会做什么。

Sometimes when a game is finished, the game’s developers can relax, at least for a while. Most of the time when a game is finished and released, it then immediately demands more work from its creators. In either case, another project might also begin. This chapter will look at what we do after we’ve finished.

发布游戏

Releasing a Game

在职业游戏设计最初的几十年里,游戏发布后,团队中的每个人都可以休息。如果开发人员加班完成游戏(历史上许多人都是这样),那么家人就可以再次在餐桌上见到他们的配偶和父母,假期也可以利用起来。对于那些加班的人来说,休息可能更像是精疲力竭地倒下。

For the first few decades of professional game design, it was likely that everyone on the team could rest when the game shipped. If the developers had crunched to complete the game—as many did, historically—then families would see their spouses and parents at the dinner table again, and vacation time could be used. For those who crunched, a rest might be more like an exhausted collapse.

当然,面向公众发布的游戏需要大量的业务支持。无论是作为盒装产品、数字下载还是实时服务发布,都是如此。在大公司,与发布游戏相关的工作通常不会落在游戏开发者的肩上(第 35 章的“意想不到的游戏设计”除外)。相反,他们的营销、销售、运营和出版同事将负责这项工作。在较小的公司,游戏开发者自己可能会负责自己的发布。

Of course, a game that gets released to the public needs a lot of business support. This is true whether it’s released as a boxed product, a digital download, or a live service. At big companies, the work associated with releasing the game usually won’t fall at the feet of a game’s developers (chapter 35’s “unexpected game design” excepted). Instead, their colleagues in marketing, sales, operations, and publishing will handle the work. At a smaller company, the game developers themselves might handle their own release.

随着可下载内容 (DLC) 的出现,游戏成为延长市场寿命的重要方式,随着“实时运营”游戏即服务的重要性日益增加,游戏创作者现在经常会发现,游戏发布后他们还得继续开发游戏。你可以想象,对于那些在游戏发布过程中加班的人来说,这是多么糟糕。如果你跌跌撞撞地越过终点线,筋疲力尽,但又不得不继续奔跑——那么,这将导致严重的身心健康问题。这强调了在游戏的整个生命周期中保持健康的工作习惯至关重要,避免加班,这样我们才能保持健康,并在游戏发布后继续开发游戏。

With the arrival of downloadable content (DLC) as an important way to extend a game’s lifetime in the marketplace, and with the growing importance of “live operations” games-as-service, a game’s creators will now often find themselves continuing to work on their game after it has shipped. You can imagine how bad this is for anyone who has crunched in the process of shipping their game. If you stumble across the finish line, exhausted and depleted, but then have to keep on running—well, that’s a recipe for severe physical and mental health problems. This emphasizes the crucial importance of maintaining healthy working habits throughout the whole life cycle of a game, avoiding crunch so that we will still be healthy and can carry on working on our game once it has shipped.

项目后回顾

The Post-Project Review

项目完成后最重要的事情之一就是进行项目后评审。评审通常在一次会议或更可能是一系列会议中进行,开发人员在会上讨论项目,寻找可以从中吸取的教训。在小型团队中,每个人都会参与项目后评审过程,这是很自然的。在大型团队中,多次会议将确保每个学科的每个人都有发言权。需要做大量笔记,以便稍后汇总成书面报告。会指定专人收集所有出现的信息和观点,并将它们记录下来,以便稍后向团队、工作室和利益相关者展示。

One of the most important things to do when a project is finished is to hold a post-project review. This usually takes place in a meeting or, more likely, a series of meetings, where the developers discuss the project, looking for lessons that they can learn from it. On a small team, it’s natural that everyone will take part in the post-project review process. On a larger team, multiple meetings will ensure that everyone from every discipline will have a voice. Extensive notes are taken to be combined later into a written report. Someone is appointed to gather up all the information and perspectives that surface and to write them up for later presentation to the team, studio, and stakeholders.

这种做法在游戏和科技界很常见,通常被称为事后分析。事后分析是游戏开发者大会演讲的一个流行类型,因此请寻找并观看您最喜欢的游戏的事后分析,以了解有关它们制作过程的更多信息。

This practice is common in the world of games and tech and is often known as a postmortem. The postmortem is a popular genre of Game Developers Conference talk, so seek out and watch the postmortems of your favorite games to learn more about how they were made.

项目后评审通常关注两件事:项目进展顺利和进展不顺利。这些视角可以应用于游戏的各个方面:机制和叙事、开发流程和工具、制作和项目管理方法、沟通、协作、冲突解决和团队领导力……在项目后评审中,我们可以讨论的内容没有限制,只要我们保持尊重、富有同情心和建设性即可。

Post-project reviews usually focus on two things: what went well on the project, and what didn’t. These lenses can be applied to every aspect of the game: mechanics and narrative, development processes and tools, production and project management methods, communication, collaboration, conflict resolution, and team leadership there’s no limit to what we can discuss in a post-project review, as long as we keep it respectful, compassionate, and constructive.

具体来说,开发人员正在寻找未来改进的方法。应用 SWOT 分析可能会很有用,寻找游戏或游戏制作方式的优势、劣势、机会和威胁。1可以融入开发人员关于他们擅长什么以及他们未来如何拓展自己的对话中(请参阅第 7 章中的“技能和成长”)。在我的专业团队和课堂上,我们总是确保在每个项目结束时进行项目后回顾,而反思过程所带来的学习是作为游戏设计师和开发人员改进的最佳方法之一。

In particular, the developers are looking for ways to improve in the future. It might be useful to apply a SWOT analysis, looking for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the game or the way that it was made.1 This could feed into the conversation the developers have about what they’re good at and how they could stretch themselves in the future (see “Repertoire and Growth” in chapter 7). On my professional teams and in my classes we always make sure to end every project with a post-project review, and the learning that comes from reflecting on process is one of the best ways to improve as a game designer and developer.

项目结束后的休息

Resting at the End of a Project

如果你能做到,在项目之间休息一段时间是很有价值的。一些工作室在大型项目结束时会给员工一段额外的休假时间,或者个别员工可能会把带薪休假时间存起来。无论你是喜欢旅行、与家人和朋友一起出去玩、读书、看电影、玩游戏还是创作音乐,项目之间的一段“休闲时间”都可以帮助你重新充电,重新设定那些让你感到有创造力和动力的事情。

If you’re able to do it, it’s valuable to get some downtime between projects. Some studios grant their employees a bonus period of time off at the end of a big project, or individual employees may have saved up their paid time off. Whether you like to travel, hang out with family and friends, read, watch films, play games, make music, a period of “fallow time” between projects can help you recharge and reset whatever it is that makes you feel creative and motivated.

一些工作室或团队可能会在项目结束时忙着将他们的下一个项目上线或支持他们的现场游戏,让他们几乎没有时间喘口气。他们可能不得不继续工作来养活自己和家人。如果你发现自己有能力在项目结束时帮助别人休息一下,请这样做。休息时间与高产期一样,都是创作过程的一部分。

Some studios or teams may be scrambling at the end of a project to bring their next project online or to support their live game, leaving them little time to catch their breath. They may have to keep working to support themselves and their families. If you find yourself in a position to support others in getting some rest at the end of a project, please do so. Downtime is as much a part of the creative process as periods of fierce productivity.

当我们在做白日梦、漫无目的时,我们脑海中浮现的想法是有价值的。它们可能会让我们感到开心,并重新激发我们对所做工作的热情。它们可能会以我们需要的方式带来反思和成长。它们可能是创造历史的游戏的源泉。所以,在你作为游戏开发者积累经验的同时,要了解自己,并弄清楚在一个大项目结束时你需要做些什么来补充能量。

The ideas that come to us when we’re daydreaming and directionless are valuable. They might just amuse us and reinvigorate our excitement for what we do. They might bring reflection and growth in ways that we need. They might be the source of a history-making game. So get to know yourself as you gain experience as a game developer and figure out what you need to do to recharge at the end of a big project.

后项目忧郁

Post-Project Blues

有时,项目结束后的休息并不那么简单。随着假期的开始,有些人会感到焦躁不安,甚至感到空虚和沮丧。突然间,我们每天所从事的令人兴奋、富有创意、需要集中注意力、情感上令人满意的工作就消失了。在完成大型项目后,我有时感觉自己就像《公路赛跑者》动画片中的威利狼,站在半空中,刚刚跑过悬崖边,透过屏幕看着观众,然后低头看着下面的深渊。

Sometimes, resting at the end of a project isn’t so simple. As vacation time begins, some people find a feeling of restlessness and anxiety settling over them, or even emptiness and depression. Suddenly, the exciting, creative, attention-demanding, emotionally rewarding work that filled our days is just—gone. After the end of big projects, I’ve sometimes felt like Wile E. Coyote from the Road Runner cartoons, standing in midair having just run over a cliff edge, looking through the screen at the audience, and then looking down at the abyss below.

项目后忧郁症的严重程度各不相同。它们可能很轻微,也可能构成严重的生活问题。处理它们是任何人都可能遇到的挑战,但它尤其与加班有关。当一个人的生活完全被工作占据,当一个人生活中的所有意义和情感联系都来自工作时,当项目结束时,这种意义和联系就会消失,问题就会出现。成瘾问题可能会与加班和项目后忧郁症产生不良相互作用,因为人们会努力以不健康的方式填补未满足的情感需求所造成的空白。

Post-project blues can vary in severity. They can be mild or might constitute a serious life problem. Dealing with them is a challenge that can arise for anyone, but it’s particularly associated with crunch. When one’s life has been entirely consumed by work, and when all of the meaning and emotional connection in one’s life comes from work, problems can arise when a project ends and that meaning and connection disappears. Addiction problems can have a bad interaction with both crunch and the post-project blues, as people struggle to fill the void created by unmet emotional needs in unhealthy ways.

我不是心理健康专家,如果你正面临心理健康问题,我希望你能寻求帮助,最好是专业人士的帮助。我有过许多很棒的心理治疗和咨询经历,我总是很高兴自己寻求了帮助。我想承认,获得心理治疗的机会往往与特权和财富有关,而且你居住的地方可能没有心理治疗。团体治疗和支持小组可以提供一种相对低成本的心理治疗形式。我曾是一个治疗小组的成员十多年,这对我的生活和幸福产生了巨大的积极影响。

I am not a mental health professional, and if you are facing mental health challenges, I hope that you can seek out help, preferably from a professional source. I have had many wonderful experiences of psychotherapy and counseling, and I am always left feeling glad that I sought help. I want to acknowledge that access to psychotherapy is often connected to privilege and wealth, and that psychotherapy may not be available where you live. Group therapy and support groups can provide a relatively low-cost form of psychotherapy. I was a member of a therapy group for more than ten years, which had a hugely positive impact on my life and well-being.

如果您在项目结束后感到沮丧,请告诉朋友。当我们在心理健康方面遇到困难时,我们常常会感到羞愧。但我们藏在黑暗中的问题只会恶化和增长。在友谊和同情的光明下,问题可以开始得到解决。

If you have the post-project blues, tell a friend. We often feel shame when we struggle with mental health. But problems that we tuck away in the dark only fester and grow. Problems that are brought out into the light of friendship and compassion can begin to be addressed.

我希望,如果我们在整个项目过程中保持健康的过程,就像我们有趣的制作过程所追求的那样,那么我们在项目结束时仍然会相对精神饱满,并且不太容易出现项目结束后的忧郁。注意你在项目结束时的感受,做任何你需要做的健康的事情来练习自我照顾。

My hope is that if we maintain a healthy process throughout the whole course of a project, in the way that our playful production process aspires to make possible, then we’ll still be relatively fresh at the end and will be less prone to the post-project blues. Take note of how you feel at the end of a project and do whatever healthy things you need to do to practice self-care.

下一个项目

The Next Project

一旦我们休息了一段时间,并且我们有能力制作另一款游戏,那么也许是时候开始我们的下一个项目了。一种方法就是翻开这本书的第一页,在构思阶段重新开始我们有趣的制作过程,进行蓝天思维、研究和原型设计。

Once we’ve had some rest, and if we’re in a good position to be able to make another game, then it may be time to begin our next project. One way to go about that is just to turn to the first page of this book and begin our playful production process again in the ideation phase, with blue sky thinking, research, and prototyping.

在许多团队中,尤其是大型团队中,当我们开始着手下一个需要管理的项目时,就会出现一种动态。我们团队中不同学科的人将分阶段离开项目。这意味着有些人(可能是很多人)会在团队领导层之前准备好开始下一个项目的工作。项目之间的这种间歇可能会造成问题,因为那些准备继续工作的人会非常合理和自然地希望在导演、制片人、领导和设计师休假回来并准备好之前为下一个项目提供一些指导。当一个团队没有领导时,就会出现问题,除非我们采取策略将潜在的糟糕情况转变为好情况。

On many teams, especially large ones, a dynamic comes into play as we begin work on our next project that we’ll need to manage. The different disciplines on our team will move off the project in stages. This means that some people—potentially, very many people—will be ready to start work on the next project before the team’s leadership is. This lull between projects can create a problem, since those who are ready to continue will, quite reasonably and naturally, want some direction for the next project before the directors, producers, leads, and designers are back from their vacation and ready to give it. When a team is left without leadership, problems can arise, unless we adopt a strategy to turn a potentially bad situation into a good one.

研发

R&D

我在顽皮狗工作期间,项目之间的空闲时间被安排在了研发上,这对我来说是一种建设性的解决方案。团队成员被要求花一些时间进行自我指导的工作,这将有助于他们为下一个项目做好准备。

During my time at Naughty Dog, the between-project lull was handled constructively by giving time over to research and development (R&D). Team members were asked to spend some time in self-guided work that would help them prepare for the next project in a general way.

也许他们会评估他们认为可能对下一个项目有帮助的新的商用工具。也许他们会自己创建一个工具或做一些工作来改进工具流程。(工具流程是用于创建游戏部分、在工具之间传输它们以进行进一步工作以及将所有内容集成到可玩版本中的工具和流程的混合体。)

Perhaps they would evaluate a new commercially available tool that they thought might be helpful on the next project. Perhaps they would create a tool themselves or do some work to improve the tools pipeline. (A tools pipeline is a mixture of the tools and processes used to create parts of the game, transfer them between tools for further work, and integrate everything into a playable build.)

在研发期间,团队成员可能会构建某个功能或内容的原型,以研究一个疯狂、富有创意、实验性的想法。有些人可能会参加培训计划,以提高他们在特定领域的技能,或者花时间通过阅读和观看视频进行研究。他们可以研究任何东西,从新游戏技术到新的艺术、动画和音频方法。他们可能会了解游戏设计的前沿理论和实践,或与项目管理和团队文化发展相关的最佳实践。

During R&D, team members might build a prototype of a feature or some content to investigate a wild, creative, experimental idea. Some might attend a training program to improve their skills in a particular area or spend time doing research by reading and watching videos. They could investigate anything from new game technologies to new approaches to art, animation, and audio. They might learn about cutting-edge theory and practice in game design, or best practices related to project management and the development of team culture.

每个工作室都应该理所当然地考虑研发,以避免停滞不前并保持最新状态,项目之间的空闲时间是进行研发的自然时间。研发工作可能需要团队领导的一些指导,但当研发由团队成员自己独立工作时,研发可以进展得相当顺利。毕竟,团队中的工匠比任何人都更了解他们的工具和流程,并且会对改进领域有很好的想法。

Every studio should be thinking about R&D as a matter of course, to avoid stagnation and to keep them current, and the lull between projects is a natural time to pursue it. An R&D effort may need some guidance from the team’s leadership, but R&D can proceed quite well when it’s driven by the team members themselves, working independently. After all, the artisans on a team know their tools and processes better than anyone and will have great ideas for areas of improvement.

从一些方向开始

Starting with Some Direction

下一个项目的游戏总监(或总监们)将在确定方向方面发挥重要作用,与团队合作确定下一款游戏是什么样子。大多数游戏总监都有一份持续不断的项目创意清单;他们想做或尝试的事情,他们认为从艺术或商业角度来看是可行的,并且他们认为他们的团队也会喜欢。

The game director (or directors) for the next project will play an important role in setting its direction, working across the team to determine what the next game will be like. Most game directors have an ongoing list of project ideas; things that they want to do or try, that they think will be viable from an artistic or business perspective, and that they think their team will like too.

下一个项目的主管尽早设定一些方向是件好事,但这个方向不必非常明确。它可以像我们在第 7 章中讨论的项目目标的早期草案一样——可能只是几句话,描述一种体验,或者项目将接受的实际限制(比如游戏类型或硬件平台)。

It’s good for the director of the next project to set some direction as early as they can, but that direction doesn’t have to be very defined. It could be like a very early draft of the project goals that we discussed in chapter 7—maybe just a few sentences about a type of experience, or the practical constraints that the project will embrace (the game’s genre or hardware platform, say).

完全没有方向会让人感到迷茫和沮丧。即使只给一点方向,团队成员也会有动力为项目做出贡献,因为他们大致知道自己要朝哪个方向前进。在项目开始时,方向越少越好,因为这样可以让人们有更大的探索自由。团队士气保持强劲,因为给人们指明方向有助于向他们表明你关心他们并重视他们的工作。在给出早期指导的同时,游戏总监也应该明确表示他们也想听听其他人的想法。在项目的构思阶段,从团队中的每个人那里获得意见很重要。

Having no direction at all can cause people to feel lost and demotivated. Given even a little direction, team members feel motivated to contribute to the project, because they know roughly what direction they’re headed in. At the very beginning of a project, less is sometimes more in terms of direction, since it can allow people greater freedom to explore. Team morale stays strong, because giving people direction helps to show them that you care about them and value their work. While they’re giving early direction, game directors should also make it clear that they want to hear everyone else’s ideas too. It’s important to get input from everyone on the team during the ideation phase of a project.

游戏总监的工作就是要有战略思维,提前做好计划——所以不要忽视团队中的这个问题。最迟在上一个项目的 alpha 阶段就开始考虑下一个项目,并准备好为新项目指明方向,让其有一个良好的开端。

It’s a game director’s job to be a strategic thinker and plan ahead—so don’t neglect this issue on your team. Start to think about your next project at the alpha milestone of your previous project at the latest, and get ready to give the direction that your new project needs to get it off to a good start.

何时离开团队

When to Leave a Team

制作出色的游戏非常困难,并且取决于团队文化:团队的工作实践、共享知识和共同价值观。团队文化是一种微妙的东西,通常只有经过长时间的缓慢而刻意的培育才能蓬勃发展和持久。个别团队成员的突然离职和加入可能会导致团队文化发生重大变化,进而对团队正在制作的游戏产生影响。

Making good games is incredibly hard and is dependent on team culture: the working practices, shared knowledge, and shared values of a team. Team culture is a delicate thing that often only thrives and lasts when it’s nurtured slowly and deliberately over time. Sudden departures and arrivals of individual team members can lead to big changes in team culture, which in turn has an impact on the game that the team is making.

尤其是,如果有人在游戏完成之前离开项目,事情就会变得异常困难。如果有人想离开团队,我认为正确的时间是在项目结束时,游戏完成之后,而不是之前。生活就是这样,并不总是能够像这样有计划地过渡,但请尽你所能完成你承诺的项目。游戏行业出奇地小,获得“完成者”的声誉是件好事,他们重视将项目完成到底。

In particular, if someone leaves a project before the game is finished, it can make things almost impossibly difficult. If someone wants to leave a team, I believe that the right time to do it is at the end of a project, when the game has been completed, and not before. Life being what it is, it isn’t always possible to make planned transitions like this, but do what you can to see out the projects you’ve committed to. The game industry is a surprisingly small place, and it’s good to get a reputation as a finisher, someone who places value on seeing projects through to completion.

话虽如此,你不应该容忍充满虐待、有毒或不健康的工作环境。虽然我认为“终结者”是一种职业价值,但我更看重个人摆脱糟糕处境的权利。我明白,能够离开工作是一种特权,每个人都应该以适合自己的方式来应对有毒的工作环境。每个人都应该努力创造没有毒性和虐待的工作环境,那些身居要职的人尤其有义务这样做。

That said, you should not tolerate a working environment that is abusive, toxic, or unhealthy. As much as I hold being a finisher as a professional value, I value an individual’s right to remove themselves from a bad situation even more highly. I understand that it’s a privilege to be able to leave a job, and each individual should navigate a toxic work situation in the way that’s right for them. Everyone should strive to create working environments free of toxicity and abuse, and those in positions of power have a particular obligation to do so.

回到起点

Back to the Beginning

就像神话中的衔尾蛇会吞下自己的尾巴一样,游戏项目的开始和结束也紧密相连。我曾听游戏设计师 Eric Zimmerman 说过,除了我们制作的单个游戏之外,还有一个更大的游戏设计项目,我们在整个游戏制作生涯中都在致力于这个项目。游戏项目是我们整个游戏设计实践的一部分,从我们制作第一款游戏开始,到我们制作的最后一款游戏的最后一名玩家离开时结束。

Like the mythical ouroboros that swallows its own tail, the ends and beginnings of game projects are intimately connected. I once heard the game designer Eric Zimmerman say that along with the individual games we make, there’s also a greater game design project, one that we work on the whole of our game-making lives. It’s the game project that is our entire game design practice, that begins when we make our very first game, and that only ends with the last player of the very last game that we make.

我认为自己非常幸运能够成为一名游戏设计师。游戏设计是一项非常有益的实践,就像生命之河一样流动。我们的每一次经历和关系、我们所学到的一切以及我们所享受的一切都可以成为我们游戏设计的一部分。重新振作起来,兴奋不已。专注于尊重、信任和同意。追随你的兴趣,完善你的手艺,随着时间的推移,你会弄清楚如何以一种健康、高效、好玩的风格制作出精彩的游戏,而这完全是你自己的方式。

I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have become a game designer. Game design is a deeply rewarding practice and flows like the river of life itself. Every experience and relationship that we have, everything that we learn, and everything that we enjoy can become a part of the design of our games. Go back to the beginning refreshed and excited. Focus on respect, trust, and consent. Follow your interests, refine your craft, and over time you’ll figure out how to make superb games in a healthy, efficient, playful style that is all your own.

  1. 1. “SWOT 分析”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis

  2. 1.  “SWOT Analysis,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis.

 

 

结语

Epilogue

游戏设计和开发非常有趣——我的朋友兼同事、艺术家兼游戏设计师彼得·布林森 (Peter Brinson) 将制作游戏和玩游戏进行了类比。他在南加州大学的游戏课上指出,在制作游戏时,我们必须学习新技能并利用它们来解决问题,就像我们在游戏中一样。随着我们的进步,问题变得越来越难,我们必须掌握更多的技能。我们最终进入“心流通道”,手头任务的难度不断增加,我们的技能不断提高,我们进入心流状态,全身心投入,拥有契克森米哈赖所描述的所有美好感觉、高度集中和时间膨胀效应。1

Game design and development are enormously fun—my friend and colleague Peter Brinson, an artist and game designer, draws parallels between making games and playing games. He points out in his USC Games classes that as we build games we have to learn new skills and use them to solve problems, just like we do in a game. As we proceed, the problems get harder, and we have to acquire even more skills. We end up in the “flow channel,” where the rising difficulty of the task at hand is met by our rising skill, and we arrive in a flow state, fully engaged, with all of the good feelings, intense focus, and time dilation effects that Csikszentmihalyi describes.1

但这意味着制作游戏也是一项艰苦的工作。必须做出无数影响深远的决定。而且因为我们处于心流状态,所以我们对所做的事情相当上瘾。我们倾向于忘记时间,漫无目的地徘徊,有可能被催眠般地投入到不相关的事情上。如果我们继续这样工作,并且以不受控制的方式工作,我们最终会精疲力竭是不可避免的。我们制作的游戏可能会在质量、交付时间和其他方面受到影响。当我们完成后,我们将无法再制作另一款游戏,我们的游戏制作实践将成为字典中不可持续的定义。

But that means that making games is also hard work. Countless decisions must be made, with far-reaching impact. And because we’re in a flow state, we’re rather addicted to what we’re doing. We have a tendency to lose track of time and wander off into the weeds, in danger of hypnotically pouring effort into irrelevant things. If we keep working like this, and do it in an uncontrolled way, it’s inevitable that we’ll eventually burn out. The game that we make will probably suffer in terms of quality, its time of delivery, and in other respects too. We won’t be in good shape to make another game when we’ve finished, and our game-making practice will have become the dictionary definition of unsustainable.

尽管创造力不可预测,使我们的工作难以规划,但我们可以通过采用本书中描述的结构化流程(或任何适合您的变体)来开始掌控我们的工作。该流程必须帮助我们管理有限的时间和资源,而不会过于僵化和官僚主义。然后,我们可以控制项目范围,同时保持足够的灵活性以适应我们在过程中发现的问题。

Even though creativity is unpredictable, making our work hard to plan, we can begin to bring our work under control by adopting a structured process like the one described in this book—or whatever variation of it works for you. The process must help us manage the limited time and resources we have available to us, without being too rigid and bureaucratic. Then we can bring the scope of our project under our control, while remaining flexible enough to adapt to the discoveries we make as we go along.

培养敏捷态度并将变化视为机遇而非危机是件好事。2游戏会在你创造的过程中向你展现自己。你需要放下自我,倾听项目,了解项目的发展方向,并驾驭它随之而来。这就是创造力的魅力所在,它让每一次开发经历都成为一次独特的旅程,让我们能够从中学习到有关设计过程的新知识。

It’s good to nurture an Agile attitude and to treat change as an opportunity rather than a crisis.2 The game will reveal itself to you as you make it. It’s up to you to set your ego aside, to listen to the project, to understand where it wants to go, and to ride along with it. That’s the beauty of creativity, and it’s what makes every development experience a unique journey where we can learn new things about the design process.

我们拥有极大的灵活性,可以继续塑造和完善游戏设计,从整个制作过程到后期制作。电影导演阿娃·杜威内 (Ava Duvernay) 在 2013 年的一次采访中说:“在剪辑室里,我可以重拍整个故事。剧本实际上是一个指南,通过它,我可以收集所有场景和文字,一旦我完成了这些,我就可以把它做成任何我想要的东西。” 3阿娃可以塑造电影的故事和意义,直到创作过程结束。由于数字媒体的可塑性以及我们工艺的探索性,游戏也是如此,也许程度甚至更大。

We have incredible flexibility to continue to shape and finesse the design of our games, right through full production and even in postproduction. In a 2013 interview, the film director Ava Duvernay said, “In the editing room I can remake a whole story. The script is really a guide, and through it I collect all those scenes and words, and once I’ve done that I can make it into anything I want.”3 Ava can shape a film’s story and meaning all the way through to the end of the creative process. Because of the plasticity of digital media, and the explorative nature of our craft, the same is true for games, perhaps to an even greater degree.

但我们也必须学会何时做出承诺。我曾经深受拖延症的困扰。我是一个思想者,这意味着我过去经常想得太多,在试图从各个角度看待事物时,我总是怀疑自己。深思熟虑是有价值的,但它也会阻碍我们做出必要的决定,从而无法建立一些东西。

But we also have to learn when to commit. I used to struggle with procrastination. I’m a thinker, which means that in my past I was often an overthinker, second-guessing myself as I tried to see things not just from both sides but from every side. Thoughtfulness is valuable, but it can hold us back too, preventing us from making the decisions we need to make so that we can just build something.

最终,我学会了认识到自己已经充分思考过某件事,现在是时候采取行动了。这不是一个容易学会的教训:有些人是思想家,有些人是行动家,但我们大多数人都处于两者之间,纠结于我们是否已经充分思考过,是否是时候采取行动了。最终,你会更好地知道什么时候该对你的决定做出承诺。

Eventually I learned to recognize when I had thought about something enough and it was now time to act. This isn’t an easy lesson to learn: some are thinkers and some are doers, but most of us are somewhere in the middle, struggling with the question of whether we’ve thought things through enough, whether it’s time to make a move. Eventually, you will get better at knowing when it’s time to commit to your decisions.

如果您喜欢本书中的内容,那么请考虑成为一名游戏制作人。以下是一些有关游戏制作的书籍(从最新到最旧排列):

If you like the sound of what you’ve read in this book, then consider becoming a game producer. Some books to find out more about game production, listed from newest to oldest, are:

  • Clinton Keith,《敏捷游戏开发:构建、播放、重复》,第 2 版。(新泽西州霍博肯:Pearson Education,2020 年)。
  • Clinton Keith, Agile Game Development: Build, Play, Repeat, 2nd ed. (Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education, 2020).
  • Clinton Keith 和 Grant Shonkwiler,《创造性敏捷工具:100 多种用于创造性创新和团队合作的工具》(Clinton Keith,2018 年)。
  • Clinton Keith and Grant Shonkwiler, Creative Agility Tools: 100+ Tools for Creative Innovation and Teamwork (Clinton Keith, 2018).
  • 希瑟·麦克斯韦尔·钱德勒(Heather Maxwell Chandler),《游戏制作工具箱》(佛罗里达州博卡拉顿:CRC Press,2020 年)。
  • Heather Maxwell Chandler, The Game Production Toolbox (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2020).
  • John Hight 和 Jeannie Novak,《游戏开发要点:游戏项目管理》(纽约州克利夫顿公园:Thomson Delmar Learning,2008 年)。
  • John Hight and Jeannie Novak, Game Development Essentials: Game Project Management (Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning, 2008).
  • Dan Irish,《游戏制作人手册》(波士顿:汤姆森技术课程,2005 年)。
  • Dan Irish, The Game Producer’s Handbook (Boston: Thomson Course Technology, 2005).

游戏行业将永远受益于那些理解创作过程、喜欢帮助组织事情、对时间和金钱负责、能够与各种人进行良好沟通。Robin Hunicke 曾告诉我,她认为制作人的角色是帮助团队中的其他人尽可能好地完成工作。我们常常倾向于将制作人视为老板,而不是促进者和合作者。制作人必须聪明且知识渊博:他们需要了解团队和游戏中发生的事情,包括大局和细节。他们还需要具有情商和正确的价值观,以便进行良好沟通并处理出现的困难情况。

The game industry will always benefit from people who understand the creative process, like to help organize things, are responsible with time and money, and can communicate well with a wide range of people. Robin Hunicke once told me that she sees the role of a producer as helping other people on the team to do their jobs as well as they possibly can. We’re too often tempted to think of producers as bosses, rather than as facilitators and collaborators. Producers have to be smart and knowledgeable: they need to understand what’s happening on the team and with the game, in terms of both the big picture and the small details. They also need to have emotional intelligence and sound values in order to communicate well and to deal with difficult situations as they arise.

制作人必须始终着眼于未来并为其制定计划,但也必须找到与他人合作的方法,以便团队中的每个人都能听到并被听到。他们必须保持乐观和积极的态度,以便在困难时期帮助团队团结在一起。至关重要的是,优秀的制作人会为团队中的同行和同事创造成长空间,并不断改进团队的文化和流程,最终帮助团队随着时间的推移制作出更好的游戏。

A producer always has to look toward the future and plan for it but must also find ways to work with people so that everyone on the team can both hear and be heard. They have to remain optimistic and positive, to help hold a team together when times are tough. Crucially, a great producer will create space for their peers and colleagues on the team to grow, and will constantly be improving the team’s culture and processes, in the ultimate service of helping the team make ever-better games as time goes by.

过去几年,各类设计师和艺术家都开始意识到自己工作中的机遇和责任。将设计原则应用于社会变革被称为社会设计,这对于从事影响力游戏、教育游戏和健康游戏的游戏设计师来说非常重要。4

In the past few years, designers and artists of all kinds have been waking up to the opportunities and obligations of their work. The application of design principles to effect social change is called social design and is of great importance to game designers working on impact games, educational games, and games for health.4

然而,我相信社交设计对每个游戏团队都很重要。正如我们在本书其他地方讨论的那样,尽管我们在过去几年中取得了很大进步,但游戏行业仍在努力应对加班问题。游戏设计过程的设计本身就是一个元级游戏设计过程,它值得我们像游戏机制和故事一样多地思考。我们应该认真研究游戏开发的社会设计,以确保我们支持而不是伤害我们团队中的人员以及玩游戏的人。

However, I believe that social design is relevant for every game team. As we’ve discussed elsewhere in this book, even though we’ve made great improvements over the last few years, the game industry is still struggling with the problem of crunch. The design of the process of game design is itself a meta-level game design process, and it deserves as much thought from us as the mechanics and stories of our games. We should take a long, hard look at the social design of game development to make sure that we are supporting, not harming, the people on our teams, as well as the people who play our games.

我们必须改进游戏制作流程,以便能够欢迎和支持各行各业的各类人士。《纽约时报》设计评论家 Alice Rawsthorn 在她的著作《设计是一种态度》中谈到了平面设计、排版和建筑缺乏多样性的历史问题。她说:“如果你相信设计在组织我们的生活以及定义生活中的物体、图像、技术和空间方面发挥着重要作用,那么我们需要最高水平的设计师是合情合理的。但除非他们来自社会的各个领域,否则我们无法获得他们。” 5

It’s important that we improve our game-making processes so that they welcome and support all kinds of people from every walk of life. In her book Design as an Attitude, New York Times design critic Alice Rawsthorn talks about the historical problems around lack of diversity in graphic design, typography, and architecture. She says, “If you believe that design plays an important part in organizing our lives and in defining the objects, imagery, technologies, and spaces that fill them, it stands to reason that we need designers of the highest caliber. But we will not get them unless they come from every area of society.”5

我很高兴看到,如今世界各地的游戏制作社区中有许多人都相信,游戏的多样性(只有游戏制作社区的多样性才能真正实现)能够为游戏带来新的游戏体验,从而增强游戏的整体竞争力。设计理念、态度和受众。我们也应该让每个人都能访问和欢迎我们的游戏和团队社区,这也是合乎道德的。

I’m heartened by the fact that many in the game-making community around the world now believe that diversity in games—which can only truly come from diversity in game-making communities—strengthens games as a whole by bringing new game design ideas, attitudes, and audiences into play. It’s also ethical that we should make the communities of our games and teams accessible and welcoming to everyone.

最终,尊重、信任和同意是良好游戏开发实践的关键。这三个要素构成了所有良好沟通、协作、领导力和冲突解决的基础。当然,我们需要游戏设计和开发技能。但如果设计师和玩家之间以及团队成员之间没有尊重、信任和同意,我们所有的游戏设计能力都可能化为乌有。这延伸到创建公正和平等的团队文化,让每个人都受到尊重并获得机会,无论他们的身份或背景如何。如果我们这样做,那么我们将为更熟练、更具创新性、从根本上更好的游戏开发社区创造条件。

Ultimately, respect, trust, and consent are the keys to good game development practice. These three elements form the basis of all good communication, collaboration, leadership, and conflict resolution. Of course, we need skill in game design and development. But without respect, trust, and consent, between designer and player, and between the members of our team, all of our game design ability will likely come to naught. This extends to creating team cultures that are just and equitable, where everyone is treated with respect and given opportunity, whatever their identity or background. If we do that, then we set up the conditions for a more skilled, more innovative, and fundamentally better game development community.

我们正站在文化的最前沿,电子游戏是充满活力的新艺术形式。我们拥有一个绝佳的机会,向每一种在复杂性和不受控制的过度劳累中挣扎的艺术家和设计师展示,使用有目的的、富有同情心的、有趣的制作过程,可以更可持续地创作艺术。

We are on the forefront of culture with the vibrant new art form that is videogames. We have an incredible opportunity to show every type of artist and designer who struggles with complexity and uncontrolled overwork that it is possible to make art more sustainably, using an intentional, compassionate, playful production process.

制作游戏没有唯一的正确方法。只有流程和工具,其中一些适合我们和我们的游戏。学习如何制作游戏的最好方法是制作它们,并继续制作它们,最终变得更好。这本书为您提供了一种更好的游戏制作类型的起点,我发现这种类型的游戏在游戏教育和行业中对各种项目都行之有效。请接受它并坚持下去,无论它将带您走向何方——然后谈谈您的流程。

There is no one right way to make a game. There are just processes and tools, some of which are right for us and our game. The best way to learn how to make games is to make them, and keep making them, and eventually get better. This book has given you a starting point for a better type of game production, one that I’ve seen working well across game education and industry for projects of all kinds. Please take it and run with it, wherever it may lead you—and then speak about your process.

  1. 1 . Csikszentmihalyi,《心流》,4。

  2. 1.  Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, 4.

  3. 2. “敏捷软件开发”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

  4. 2.  “Agile Software Development,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development.

  5. 3. Emma Carmichael,《‘我有想讲的故事’:与电影制片人 Ava DuVernay 的对话》,《The Hairpin》,2013 年 7 月 2 日,https://www.thehairpin.com/2013/07/i-have-stories-i-want-to-tell-a-conversation-with-filmmaker-ava-duvernay/

  6. 3.  Emma Carmichael, “‘I Have Stories I Want to Tell’: A Conversation with Filmmaker Ava DuVernay,” The Hairpin, July 2, 2013, https://www.thehairpin.com/2013/07/i-have-stories-i-want-to-tell-a-conversation-with-filmmaker-ava-duvernay/.

  7. 4. “社会设计”,维基百科,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_design

  8. 4.  “Social Design,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_design.

  9. 5 . Rawsthorn,《设计作为一种态度》,68。

  10. 5.  Rawsthorn, Design as an Attitude, 68.

 

 

附录 A:好玩制作流程的四个阶段、里程碑和可交付成果

Appendix A: The Four Phases, Milestones, and Deliverables of the Playful Production Process

图 A.1

Figure A.1

图片来源:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、Mattie Rosen 和 Richard Lemarchand。

Image credit: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, Mattie Rosen, and Richard Lemarchand.

 

 

附录 B:图 7.1 的转录

Appendix B: Transcription of Figure 7.1

神秘海域:德雷克的宝藏 是什么?

What Is Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune?

1. 剧情丰富、节奏明快。

1.   It’s action packed and fast paced.

我们绝不会放慢动作去探究过于复杂的谜题或繁琐的游戏机制……我们始终保持游戏的快速和乐趣。

We never slow the action down too much to delve into overly complicated puzzles or cumbersome gameplay mechanics we always keep it fast and fun.

2.《神秘海域》并没有把自己看得太严肃。

2.   Uncharted doesn’t take itself too seriously.

我们融合了悬疑、神秘和戏剧元素,但同时又不忘有趣的“低俗动作”基调。偶尔的妙语或有趣的困境打破了紧张气氛,这是《神秘海域》独特之处的重要部分。

We combine elements of suspense, mystery and drama, but keep in mind the fun “pulp action” tone. An occasional wise crack or funny predicament to break the tension is a big part of what makes Uncharted unique.

3.德雷克是一个会犯错的普通人。

3.   Drake is a fallible everyman.

德雷克不是詹姆斯·邦德。他从来都不是完全掌控全局,总是通过即兴发挥或使用任何他能掌握的手段来争取上风。他没有“增强实力”或成为超人,而是总是发挥他能力的极限。

Drake is not James Bond. He is never in complete control, always scrambling to get the upper hand by improvising or using whatever means are at his disposal. He doesn’t get “souped up” or become a superman, but instead is always operating at the very edge of his abilities.

4.我们发现了失落而神秘的地方。

4.   We discover lost and mysterious places.

我们希望大部分冒险都花在探索“未知”的地方,远离人迹罕至的地方,被时间遗忘的地方。德雷克是一名侦探,试图把这些碎片拼凑起来。

We want most of the adventure to be spent exploring “uncharted” places, off the beaten path and forgotten by time. Drake is [a] detective of sorts, trying to put the pieces together.

5.我们的世界存在着可信的超自然元素。

5.   Our world has believable supernatural elements.

电影中会有神秘和看似超自然的元素,但德雷克必须始终保持怀疑态度。《神秘海域》更像是《X 档案》/《惊变 28 天》中的超自然元素,而不是《木乃伊》/《捉鬼敢死队》中的超自然元素。

There will be mysterious and seemingly supernatural elements, but it must always be possible for Drake to be skeptical. Uncharted is more like an “X-Files/28 Days Later” supernatural as opposed to a “The Mummy/Ghostbusters” supernatural.

6. 熟悉的环境中遇到不熟悉的事物。

6.   Unfamiliar things in a familiar setting.

从故事到环境,一切都应该具有某种现实生活历史感和视觉可信度。一旦建立了坚实的可信度基础,多层次的“奇幻”元素就会产生更大的影响。

From the story to the environments, everything should have some sense of real life historical and visual believability. Once that foundation of believability has been strongly built, a layered element of the “fantastical” has all that much more impact.

 

 

附录 C:游戏设计宏 神秘海域 2:盗贼同盟 (细节)来自图 18.2

Appendix C: Game Design Macro for Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (detail) from Figure 18.2

图 C.1

Figure C.1

图片来源:©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™。由 Naughty Dog LLC 创作和开发。

Image credit: ©2009 SIE LLC/ UNCHARTED 2: Among Thieves™. Created & developed by Naughty Dog LLC.

 

 

致谢

Acknowledgments

向我的父母 Wyn 和 Derek 以及我的兄弟 Jeremy 表达无限的爱和衷心的感谢。向 Nova Jiang 表达爱和关怀,他一直激励和支持着我。向 Liz、Shiran 和 Mia、Sarah 及其家人、Ros、Peter、Phil、Helen、Paul 及其孩子们、Sheila 姨妈、Duncan、Teresa、Michael 和 Emma 以及 David 叔叔表达深切的爱。

With immeasurable love and heartfelt thanks to my parents, Wyn and Derek, and to my brother Jeremy. Love and affection to Nova Jiang, who has always inspired and supported me. Much love to Liz, Shiran, and Mia, to Sarah and her family, to Ros, Peter, Phil, Helen, Paul, and their kids, to Aunt Sheila, Duncan, Teresa, Michael, and Emma, and to Uncle David.

我要特别感谢先锋游戏设计师和教育家 Tracy Fullerton,她的鼓舞人心的作品改变了世界和我的生活。Tracy,你对本书的慷慨和细致的帮助是不可或缺的,我对此深表感谢。你们的友谊令人振奋。

I want to give particular thanks to pioneering game designer and educator Tracy Fullerton, whose inspirational work transformed the world and my life. Tracy, your generous and detailed help with this book was indispensable, and you have my deepest gratitude. Your friendship is elevating.

衷心感谢无与伦比的 Mark Cerny,他的仔细阅读和建设性批评对于完成这个项目至关重要,就像完成许多其他项目一样。Mark,感谢您肯定这本书的价值并抽出时间帮助我。您一直是我的引路明灯。

Sincere thanks to the incomparable Mark Cerny, whose close reading and constructive critique was crucial in bringing this project to completion, as with many others. Mark, thank you for affirming the values in this book and for taking the time to give me your help. You have always been a guiding light.

非常感谢 Evan Wells 对本书的帮助,以及给予我如此多绝佳机会。非常感谢 Amy Hennig,她带我踏上了游戏设计和讲故事的冒险之旅,最终收获的财富是最珍贵的友谊。

Many thanks to Evan Wells for his help with the book and for giving me so many great opportunities. Fantastical thanks and love to Amy Hennig, who took me along on an escapade in game design and storytelling, where the treasure at the end was the dearest of friendships.

深深地感谢 Mary McCoy,她的博学激励和鼓舞了我,她的建议支撑着我。特别感谢 Dan Tarshish 的陪同和谈话,这些都为本书的完成提供了助力。非常感谢我的专家、理想的读者:Alan Dang、Egan Hirvela、Jeff Watson、Owen Harris 和 Timothy Lee。非常感谢 Mattie Rosen,他出乎意料的帮助成为了本书完成的关键部分。非常感谢所有为本书的创作提供意见和鼓励的人:Adam Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz、Dennis Wixon、Elizabeth Blythe、Gordon Calleja、Jack Epps 和 Jeremy Gibson Bond。感谢 Loren Chodosh 的法律援助,以及 Max 和 Nick Folkman,他们的Script Lock播客激发了灵感。我非常感谢麻省理工学院出版社高级采购编辑 Doug Sery 对我的指导和信任,感谢麻省理工学院出版社编辑 Noah J. Springer 的专业建议,让我走上正轨,也感谢匿名评论者的宝贵意见。特别感谢我的制作编辑 Helen Wheeler 和出色的文字编辑 Lunaea Weatherstone,感谢他们的辛勤工作和明智的建议。

Thanks with profound admiration for Mary McCoy, whose erudition inspires and uplifts me, and whose authorial advice sustains me. Special thanks to Dan Tarshish for the walks and talk that gave shape to this book. Great gratitude to my expert, ideal readers: Alan Dang, Egan Hirvela, Jeff Watson, Owen Harris, and Timothy Lee. Superlative thanks to Mattie Rosen, whose unexpected offer of help turned into a key part of this book’s completion. Many thanks to everyone whose input and encouragement helped in the creation of this book: Adam Sulzdorf-Liszkiewicz, Dennis Wixon, Elizabeth Blythe, Gordon Calleja, Jack Epps, and Jeremy Gibson Bond. Thanks to Loren Chodosh for legal assistance, and to Max and Nick Folkman, whose Script Lock podcast sparked ideas. I’m very grateful to MIT Press senior acquisitions editor Doug Sery for his guidance and the trust that he placed in me, to MIT Press editor Noah J. Springer, whose expert advice kept me on track, and to my anonymous reviewers for their valuable input. Special thanks to my production editor, Helen Wheeler, and to my superb copy editor, Lunaea Weatherstone, for their hard work and wise counsel.

非常感谢在本书写作过程中给予我创作灵感和实际帮助的每一个人:Aniko Imre、Anna Anthropy、Auriea Harvey、Bo Ruberg、Cara Ellison、Chad Toprak、Colleen Macklin、Eric Zimmerman、Frank Lantz、Geoffrey Long、Grant Shonkwiler、Irving Belateche、Jesper Juul、John Sharp、Kris Ligman、Mary Flanagan、Mary Sweeney、Michael John、Miguel Sicart、Naomi Clark、Nathalie Pozzi、Raph Koster、Sam Gosling、Samantha Kalman、Sharon Greene、Steve Gaynor、Tara McPherson、Tobias Kopka、William Huber,以及在我写作过程中给予我建议和鼓励的每一个人(太多了,无法一一列举)。感谢在其他地方没有提到的对文本和图表做出贡献的所有人士:Gabriela Purri R. Gomes、George Kokoris、Jesse Vigil、Jim Huntley 和 Marc Wilhelm。感谢那些允许我使用与其作品相关的图片的人:Aaron Cheney、Chao Chen、Christoph Rosenthal、George Li、Jenny Jiao Hsia、Julian Ceipek 和 Michael Barclay。在此特别感谢 Arne Meyer、Bryan Pardilla 和 Sony Interactive Entertainment。

Many thanks to everyone who gave me creative inspiration and practical help as I worked on this book: Aniko Imre, Anna Anthropy, Auriea Harvey, Bo Ruberg, Cara Ellison, Chad Toprak, Colleen Macklin, Eric Zimmerman, Frank Lantz, Geoffrey Long, Grant Shonkwiler, Irving Belateche, Jesper Juul, John Sharp, Kris Ligman, Mary Flanagan, Mary Sweeney, Michael John, Miguel Sicart, Naomi Clark, Nathalie Pozzi, Raph Koster, Sam Gosling, Samantha Kalman, Sharon Greene, Steve Gaynor, Tara McPherson, Tobias Kopka, William Huber, and everyone (too many to name) who gave me advice and cheered me on as I wrote. Thanks to everyone not mentioned elsewhere who made contributions to the text and figures: Gabriela Purri R. Gomes, George Kokoris, Jesse Vigil, Jim Huntley, and Marc Wilhelm. Thanks to those who gave me permission to use images related to their work: Aaron Cheney, Chao Chen, Christoph Rosenthal, George Li, Jenny Jiao Hsia, Julian Ceipek, and Michael Barclay. Special thanks in this regard to Arne Meyer, Bryan Pardilla, and Sony Interactive Entertainment.

我非常感谢在 MicroProse、Crystal Dynamics、Naughty Dog 和 USC 游戏创新实验室共事的每一个人。我从你们身上学到了很多东西,我们一起制作游戏非常开心。我没有篇幅一一感谢你们,但我们的合作给我的生活带来了极大的快乐,并帮助我清晰地理解了本书中的想法。我特别要感谢 Robin Hunicke、Hirokazu Yasuhara、Celia Pearce、Sam Roberts、Heather Kelly、Connie Booth、Andy Gavin、Grady Hunt、Sam Thompson、Andrew Bennett、Rosaura Sandoval、Paul Reiche III、John Spinale、Stuart Whyte、Andy Hieke 和 Pete Moreland,感谢你们一路以来给予我的指导和友谊。

I am very indebted to everyone I worked with at MicroProse, Crystal Dynamics, Naughty Dog, and in the USC Game Innovation Lab. I learned so much from you all, and we’ve had such fun making games together. I lack space to thank you all individually, but our collaborations brought great happiness into my life and helped make the ideas in this book clear to me. I would particularly like to thank Robin Hunicke, Hirokazu Yasuhara, Celia Pearce, Sam Roberts, Heather Kelly, Connie Booth, Andy Gavin, Grady Hunt, Sam Thompson, Andrew Bennett, Rosaura Sandoval, Paul Reiche III, John Spinale, Stuart Whyte, Andy Hieke, and Pete Moreland for the mentorship and friendship that you gave me along the way.

非常感谢 USC 游戏项目过去和现在的所有同事,我从他们身上学到了很多东西,他们的支持也让我受益匪浅。特别感谢 Peter Brinson,他向我展示了如何教学;Danny Bilson,他的热情和慷慨激励了我;Martzi Campos,他重启了我的创作实践;Jeremy Gibson Bond 和 Margaret Moser,他们教我编码,还教了我很多其他东西;Andy Nealen,他让我对极简主义和系统动力学有了更多的了解;Jane Pinckard,她的榜样让我一直努力做得更好;Andreas Kratky、Gordon Bellamy、Kiki Benzon、Laird Malamed 和 Marientina Gotsis,感谢他们的智慧和友谊。非常感谢南加州大学电影艺术学院院长 Elizabeth M. Daley、Akira Mizuta Lippit、Michael Renov 和所有同事对我的热情欢迎。特别感谢我所有在 USC 游戏项目及其他项目的学生,感谢你们的辛勤工作、创造力和幽默感。特别感谢 CTIN-532 和 CTIN-484/489 的校友,本书的章节最初是为他们撰写的,他们给了我很棒的笔记。教你们过去和现在都是一种乐趣——感谢你们教给我的一切。

Great thanks to all my colleagues in the USC Games program, past and present, from whom I’ve learned so much, and whose support I have benefited from enormously. Particular thanks go to Peter Brinson, who showed me how to teach; Danny Bilson, whose passion and generosity inspire me; Martzi Campos, who rebooted my creative practice; Jeremy Gibson Bond and Margaret Moser, who taught me to code, and much else besides; Andy Nealen, for opening my mind to minimalism and system dynamics; Jane Pinckard, whose example makes me strive always to do better; and Andreas Kratky, Gordon Bellamy, Kiki Benzon, Laird Malamed, and Marientina Gotsis for their wisdom and friendship. Many thanks to Dean Elizabeth M. Daley, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Michael Renov, and all my colleagues in the USC School of Cinematic Arts, for welcoming me so warmly. A very special thanks to all my students, in the USC Games program and beyond, for all your hard work, creativity, and good humor. A particular shout-out to the alumni of CTIN-532 and CTIN-484/489, for whom chapters of this book were originally written, and who gave me great notes. Teaching you was and is a pleasure—thank you for all that you’ve taught me.

向腾讯互动娱乐集团副总裁兼腾讯游戏学院院长夏琳和腾讯游戏人力资源总裁马云致以崇高的敬意和诚挚的谢意。我们的合作结下了深厚的友谊,并帮助巩固了本书中的想法。感谢李敏、李申、刘志强、王凯、王依琳、吴音以及在腾讯 USC 游戏研讨会期间与我们合作过的所有人。

Great respect and sincere thanks to Sammi Xia Lin, vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Group at Tencent and dean of the Tencent Game Institute, and to Eric Ma, president of human resources for Tencent Games. Our collaborations have led to great friendships and helped to solidify the ideas in this book. Thanks to Li Min, Li Shen, Neo Liu, Cathy Wang, Elaine Wang, Yin Wu, and everyone we’ve worked with during the Tencent USC Games workshops.

我要向那些我有幸参与的会议、节日和峰会的社区表达深深的谢意,尤其是游戏开发者大会和 IndieCade 的社区。非常感谢我在 HEVGA、格拉斯哥卡利多尼亚大学以及广阔而美妙的游戏学术界的朋友们。感谢我过去和现在的所有老师,他们确保我的世界不断扩大。向我在游戏、艺术和教学领域结识的所有朋友以及来自纽恩特和牛津的最老朋友致以深切的爱。你们在我困难的时候照顾我,在我最快乐的时候与我一起庆祝,给我带来了极大的快乐。对 Octavia E. Butler 的工作深表感谢和敬意。

I want to extend deep gratitude to the communities of the conferences, festivals, and summits that I’ve been fortunate to be a part of, particularly those of the Game Developers Conference and IndieCade. Many thanks to my friends in HEVGA, at Glasgow Caledonian University, and in the wide, wonderful world of games academia. Gratitude to all my teachers, past and present, who’ve made sure that my world keeps expanding. Deep and dear love to all the friends I’ve made through the worlds of games, art, and teaching, and to my oldest friends from Newent and Oxford. You cared for me in the hard times, celebrated with me at the high points, and bring me great joy. With deep gratitude and respect for the work of Octavia E. Butler.

纪念凯特·克拉克夫人,她教会了我如何思考;麦克·布伦顿,他给了我起步的机会;我的祖父母,终身游戏爱好者多琳和霍尔顿(分别是桥牌和国际象棋)和我的祖母乔伊斯,她给了我心灵;还有我的朋友和同事杰夫·沃森博士,他激励他周围的每个人深入思考,并始终保持善良。杰夫的反馈和支持对本书的完成起到了无价的作用。

In memory of Mrs. Kate Clarke, who taught me how to think; Mike Brunton, who gave me my start; my grandparents, lifelong gamers Doreen and Holden (bridge and chess, respectively), and my grandmother Joyce, who gave me my heart; and my friend and colleague Dr. Jeff Watson, who inspired everyone around him to think deeply, and always to be kind. Jeff’s feedback and support were invaluable in the completion of this book.

 

 

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  • Lupton, Ellen. Design Is Storytelling. New York: Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, 2017.
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  • Scannell, Mary. The Big Book of Conflict Resolution Games: Quick, Effective Activities to Improve Communication, Trust, and Collaboration. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.
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  • Swink, Steve. Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation. Burlington, MA: Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier, 2008.
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  • Tufte, Edward R. Envisioning Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 2013.
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  • Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. 3rd ed. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 2007.
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  • Yorke, John. Into the Woods: A Five-Act Journey into Story. New York: Abrams, 2015.
  • 扎卡里亚森、彼得和米科拉伊·戴梅克。视频游戏营销:学生教科书。伦敦:劳特利奇,2016。
  • Zackariasson, Peter, and Mikolaj Dymek. Video Game Marketing: A Student Textbook. London: Routledge, 2016.

引用的游戏

Games Cited

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  • Painstation。Tilman Reiff 和 Volker Morawe,2001 年。
  • Painstation. Tilman Reiff and Volker Morawe, 2001.
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  • Pandemonium! Toys for Bob. Crystal Dynamics, 1996.
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  • Pong. Allan Alcorn. Atari, 1972.
  • Proteus。Twisted Tree Games 和 David Kanaga。2013 年。
  • Proteus. Twisted Tree Games and David Kanaga. 2013.
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  • Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time. Insomniac Games. Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2009.
  • 力量之戒。顽皮狗。电子艺界,1991 年。
  • Rings of Power. Naughty Dog. Electronic Arts, 1991.
  • 涂鸦冒险家。第五牢房。华纳兄弟互动娱乐,2009 年。
  • Scribblenauts. 5th Cell. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, 2009.
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  • The Secret of Monkey Island. Lucasfilm Games, 1990.
  • 模拟城市。Maxis,1989 年。
  • SimCity. Maxis, 1989.
  • 模拟人生。Maxis。电子艺界,2000 年。
  • The Sims. Maxis. Electronic Arts, 2000.
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  • 塔尔西斯。Choice Provisions,2016 年。
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  • Tinhead。MicroProse UK。Ballistic,1993 年。
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  • Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. Naughty Dog. Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2007.
  • 神秘海域 2:纵横四海。顽皮狗。索尼互动娱乐,2009 年。
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  • 神秘海域 3:德雷克的诡计。顽皮狗。索尼互动娱乐,2011 年。
  • Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Naughty Dog. Sony Interactive Entertainment, 2011.
  • Walden,一款游戏。Tracy Fullerton 和 USC 游戏创新实验室。USC 游戏,2017 年。
  • Walden, a game. Tracy Fullerton and USC Game Innovation Lab. USC Games, 2017.
  • 巫师 3:狂猎。CD Projekt Red。CD Projekt,2015 年。
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CD Projekt Red. CD Projekt, 2015.

 

 

指数

Index

  • 坏跳跃系统,271–272
  • Bad jumps system, 271–272
  • BAFTA(奖项),2
  • BAFTA (award), 2
  • 巴克莱,迈克尔,8488
  • Barclay, Michael, 84, 88
  • 大本营,197
  • Basecamp, 197
  • 堡垒, 80
  • Bastion, 80
  • 查尔斯·巴克斯特1
  • Baxter, Charles, 1
  • 美丽的角落,87–89,122
  • Beautiful corner, 87–89, 122
  • “卧室开发商”,72
  • “Bedroom developers,” 72
  • 设计过程开始,9–10另请参阅 构思
  • Beginning of design process, 9–10. See also Ideation
  • 活动类型,9
  • activity types, 9
  • 定义游戏的独特之处,10
  • defining unique things about the game, 10
  • 构思,9
  • ideation, 9
  • 玩家体验目标,9
  • player experience goals, 9
  • 项目目标9,10
  • project goals, 9, 10
  • 贝拉泰什,欧文141,148
  • Belateche, Irving, 141, 148
  • 最佳故事奖:如何在商业及其他领域利用好莱坞故事讲述方式160
  • Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business and Beyond, The, 160
  • Beta里程碑,309–316
  • Beta milestone, 309–316
  • 测试阶段、同心开发和游戏健康,312
  • beta phase, concentric development, and game health, 312
  • 认证流程,310
  • certification process, 310
  • 挑战,313–314
  • challenge of reaching, 313–314
  • 完整性和310–312
  • completeness and, 310–312
  • 致谢和归属,313
  • credits and attribution, 313
  • 查找并修复死角,312
  • finding and fixing dead ends, 312
  • 查找并修复漏洞,311
  • finding and fixing loopholes, 311
  • 模糊里程碑,313
  • fuzzy milestone, 313
  • 里程碑回顾,315–316
  • milestone review at, 315–316
  • 入职顺序,310
  • onboarding sequence, 310
  • 要求,310
  • requirements for, 310
  • 保存浮渣,311
  • save scumming, 311
  • 总结,314–315
  • summarizing of, 314–315
  • 冲突解决游戏大全45
  • Big Book of Conflict Resolution Games, The, 45
  • 以撒的结合312
  • Binding of Isaac, The, 312
  • Bitsy,31岁
  • Bitsy, 31
  • 布洛克,布鲁斯,175
  • Block, Bruce, 175
  • 块网格
  • Blockmesh
  • 设计过程83–85,86,297
  • design process, 83–85, 86, 297
  • 流程(视觉效果)87
  • process (visual effects), 87
  • 测试级别(同心发展),122
  • test level (concentric development), 122
  • 测试级别(预生产),124
  • test level (preproduction), 124
  • 蓝天思维4,11-16
  • Blue sky thinking, 4, 11–16
  • 自动化,14-15
  • automatism, 14–15
  • 头脑风暴,11-12
  • brainstorming, 11–12
  • 集思广益的结果,评估,12-13
  • brainstorm results, evaluation of, 12–13
  • 创造力,16
  • creativity, 16
  • 定义,11
  • definition of, 11
  • 设计师,15-16岁
  • designers, 15–16
  • 尤里卡!时刻,16
  • eureka! moments, 16
  • 日记,15
  • journaling, 15
  • 列表,15–16
  • lists, 15–16
  • 思维导图,13-14
  • mind mapping, 13–14
  • 其他蓝天思维技巧,15
  • other blue sky thinking techniques, 15
  • 电子表格,15–16
  • spreadsheets, 15–16
  • 故事板,15
  • storyboarding, 15
  • 维基百科:随机,15
  • Wikipedia:Random, 15
  • 伊恩·博格斯特32 岁
  • Bogost, Ian, 32
  • 邦德,杰里米·吉布森,196
  • Bond, Jeremy Gibson, 196
  • 超现实主义游戏书,A14
  • Book of Surrealist Games, A, 14
  • Bootcamp Bootleg , 116
  • Bootcamp Bootleg, 116
  • 头脑风暴,11-13
  • Brainstorming, 11–13
  • 定义,11
  • definition of, 11
  • 结果、评估,12–13
  • results, evaluation of, 12–13
  • 规则,11–12
  • rules of, 11–12
  • 主题,互联网研究,17
  • subject, Internet research of, 17
  • 价值,13
  • value of, 13
  • 育婴奇谭(电影),101
  • Bringing Up Baby (film), 101
  • Brotchie,Alastair,14岁
  • Brotchie, Alastair, 14
  • 错误数据库,233
  • Bug database, 233
  • 错误修复,321
  • Bug fixing, 321
  • 错误跟踪。请参阅 Alpha 阶段和错误跟踪
  • Bug tracking. See Alpha phase and bug tracking
  • Bugzilla,279
  • Bugzilla, 279
  • 构建验证测试,234
  • Build verification testing, 234
  • BumbleBear 游戏,24
  • BumbleBear Games, 24
  • 燃尽图,189–195
  • Burndown chart, 189–195
  • 建立信任和尊重的氛围,196–197
  • atmosphere of trust and respect created by, 196–197
  • 重新安排,195–196
  • rescheduling in, 195–196
  • 相机,80
  • Cameras, 80
  • 卡梅伦,威廉·布鲁斯,275
  • Cameron, William Bruce, 275
  • 坎贝尔,约瑟夫,148
  • Campbell, Joseph, 148
  • 取消项目,212–213
  • Canceling a project, 212–213
  • 坎迪·斯图尔特(20岁)
  • Candy, Stuart, 20
  • 卡迈克尔,莎拉·格林,136 , 188
  • Carmichael, Sarah Green, 136, 188
  • 卡内基梅隆大学 ETC 实验游戏项目,224
  • Carnegie Mellon ETC Experimental Gameplay Project, 224
  • 卡内基梅隆大学,20
  • Carnegie Mellon University, 20
  • 卡斯·詹姆斯(Carse, James)59 岁
  • Carse, James, 59
  • Catmull,Ed 45,128,204
  • Catmull, Ed, 45, 128, 204
  • 朱利安·切佩克(Julian Ceipek),26岁
  • Ceipek, Julian, 26
  • 马克·塞尔尼
  • Cerny, Mark
  • 传记,73–74
  • biography of, 73–74
  • 取消项目,212-213
  • on canceling a project, 212–213
  • 定义创意方向,41
  • on defining creative direction, 41
  • 游戏设计宏观层面,151–153
  • on the game design macro, 151–153
  • 在游戏设计宏观图表155,164
  • on the game design macro chart, 155, 164
  • 关于游戏设计宏观和在完整制作中学习的东西,165
  • on the game design macro and learning things in full production, 165
  • 关于游戏设计宏观和故事,172
  • on the game design macro and story, 172
  • 关于 3D 音频技术在游戏中的重要性,36
  • on importance of 3D audio technology in games, 36
  • 关于无法安排前期制作,99
  • on the impossibility of scheduling preproduction, 99
  • 关于棘手问题和调度,101
  • on intractable problems and scheduling, 101
  • 削减开支,195
  • on making cuts, 195
  • 制作原型,92
  • on making prototypes, 92
  • 游戏测试中最少需要多少测试者,112
  • on the minimum number of playtesters in a playtest, 112
  • 规划整体游戏,176
  • on planning holistic games, 176
  • 和游戏测试237,239
  • and playtesting, 237, 239
  • 在可发布的第一个可播放内容(垂直切片)上,92
  • on the publishable first playable (vertical slice), 92
  • 关于主任的作用,66
  • on the role of the director, 66
  • 获得大量观众的支持,64
  • on succeeding with a large audience, 64
  • 预生产的价值,74
  • on the value of preproduction, 74
  • 关于前期制作的“重大混乱”,100
  • on the “vital chaos” of preproduction, 100
  • 认证过程,333-338
  • Certification process, 333–338
  • 认证要求,示例,338
  • certification requirements, example, 338
  • 认证要求,名称,334
  • certification requirements, names for, 334
  • 内容评级,335–338
  • content ratings, 335–338
  • ESRB,内容分级发布者,335
  • ESRB, content ratings issued by, 335
  • 通过和未通过证书,335
  • passing and failing cert, 335
  • PEGI,内容评级发布者,335
  • PEGI, content ratings issued by, 335
  • 时间轴,334
  • timeline, 334
  • 通过认证后更新游戏,335
  • updating games after passing cert, 335
  • CG 动画。请参阅 计算机图形动画
  • CG animation. See Computer graphics animation
  • 游戏设计师面临的挑战:视频游戏设计师的非数字化练习, 322
  • Challenges for Game Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game Designers, 322
  • 钱德勒,希瑟·麦克斯韦尔197,350
  • Chandler, Heather Maxwell, 197, 350
  • 角色,79另请参阅 玩家角色
  • Character, 79. See also Player-character
  • 陈超26岁
  • Chen, Chao, 26
  • 陈杰诺瓦54岁
  • Chen, Jenova, 54
  • Choice Provisions Inc.,226
  • Choice Provisions Inc., 226
  • “选择游戏开发的项目管理工具”(文章),284
  • “Choosing a Project Management Tool for Game Development” (article), 284
  • 城市:天际线80
  • Cities: Skylines, 80
  • 克拉克,娜奥米159,170
  • Clark, Naomi, 159, 170
  • 54岁
  • Cloud, 54
  • 色彩分级,319
  • Color grading, 319
  • 科姆斯,阿瑟,82岁
  • Combs, Arthur, 82
  • 沟通(作为游戏设计技能),43-51
  • Communication (as game design skill), 43–51
  • 基本技能,45–48
  • basic skills, 45–48
  • 简洁,47
  • brevity, 47
  • 清晰度,46
  • clarity, 46
  • 合作,44
  • collaboration, 44
  • 沟通的重要性,43
  • communication, importance of, 43
  • 冲突,45
  • conflict, 45
  • 建设性批评,49
  • constructive criticism, 49
  • 情绪,43
  • emotion, 43
  • 反馈, 49
  • feedback, 49
  • 握手协议, 47
  • handshaking protocol, 47
  • 领导力,44-45
  • leadership, 44–45
  • 聆听,47–48
  • listening, 47–48
  • 镜像或反射,48
  • mirroring or reflecting, 48
  • 尊重、信任和同意,51
  • respect, trust, and consent, 51
  • 夹层,48–51
  • sandwiching, 48–51
  • 软技能,43
  • soft skills, 43
  • 谈论谈论,45
  • talking about talking, 45
  • 评论社区,199
  • Communities of review, 199
  • 合规性测试。请参阅 认证流程
  • Compliance testing. See Certification process
  • 计算机图形(CG)动画,299
  • Computer graphics (CG) animation, 299
  • 同心发展,119–132
  • Concentric development, 119–132
  • 敏捷和130
  • Agile and, 130
  • 未完成的工作量,最大化,131
  • amount of work not done, maximizing of, 131
  • beta 里程碑和312
  • beta milestone and, 312
  • blockmesh 测试级别,122
  • blockmesh test level, 122
  • 默认值,125
  • defaults, 125
  • 定义,119–121
  • definition of, 119–121
  • 设计参数和,123–124
  • design parameters and, 123–124
  • 失败,128
  • failure, 128
  • 迭代、评估和稳定性,127
  • iteration, evaluation, and stability, 127
  • 多汁,224
  • juiciness and, 224
  • 模块化和系统,126–127
  • modularity and systems, 126–127
  • 运动,相关控制,121
  • movement, controls related to, 121
  • 步伐,131–132
  • pace of, 131–132
  • 边走边打磨,124–125
  • polishing as you go, 124–125
  • 主要力学、实施,121–122
  • primary mechanics, implementation of, 121–122
  • 产值,124
  • production value, 124
  • 朋克美学,125
  • punk aesthetic, 125
  • 二次力学和三次力学的实现,122–123
  • secondary mechanics and tertiary mechanics, implementation of, 122–123
  • 内容存根与302
  • stubbing in content versus, 302
  • 切换到,128–129
  • switch to, 128–129
  • 测试级别,124
  • test levels, 124
  • 时间管理,128
  • time management with, 128
  • 宇宙按层次结构组织,119
  • universe as organized into hierarchies, 119
  • 垂直切片和129
  • vertical slice and, 129
  • 信心测试,234
  • Confidence testing, 234
  • 消耗我, 25
  • Consume Me, 25
  • 内容创建者,306
  • Content creators, 306
  • 内容警告,109
  • Content warnings, 109
  • 控制器振动。请参阅 触觉效果
  • Controller vibration. See Haptic effects
  • 控制流程。请参阅 获得流程控制权
  • Control of the process. See Gaining control of the process
  • 游戏控制,81–83
  • Controls, game, 81–83
  • 控制备忘单,106–107
  • Controls cheat sheet, 106–107
  • 控制屏幕,289另请参阅 屏幕,界面
  • Controls screen, 289. See also Screen, interface
  • 核心循环,77–79
  • Core loop, 77–79
  • 核心力学83,88,162
  • Core mechanics, 83, 88, 162
  • 古惑狼, 62 , 79
  • Crash Bandicoot, 62, 79
  • 古惑狼2:皮质反击战, 153
  • Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back, 153
  • 创意敏捷工具:100多种 用于创意创新和团队合作的工具, 45 , 350
  • Creative Agility Tools: 100+ Tools for Creative Innovation and Teamwork, 45, 350
  • 创造力股份有限公司,128,204,205,206
  • Creativity, Inc., 128, 204, 205, 206
  • 创造力公司:克服阻碍真正灵感的无形力量45
  • Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, 45
  • 学分,39,99,175,313–314,336–337
  • Credits, 39, 99, 175, 313–314, 336–337
  • 积分屏幕,314,337另请参阅屏幕、界面
  • Credits screen, 314, 337. See also Screen, interface
  • 批评,207,208,210
  • Critique, 207, 208, 210
  • Crunch ,3,135–139
  • Crunch, 3, 135–139
  • 实际开发人员成就,137
  • actual developer accomplishment, 137
  • 尝试开发人员的努力,136
  • attempted developer effort, 136
  • 描述,135
  • description of, 135
  • 延长卷腹,135
  • extended crunch, 135
  • 游戏设计宏,135
  • game design macro, 135
  • 涉及的行业,139
  • industries dealing with, 139
  • 移动球门柱138,139,320
  • moving goalposts, 138, 139, 320
  • “哦,该死!”那一刻,136
  • “oh, shit!” moment, 136
  • 可能的努力路径137,138
  • probable effort path, 137, 138
  • 自律,137
  • self-discipline, 137
  • 水晶动力24,35,45,120
  • Crystal Dynamics, 24, 35, 45, 120
  • 米哈利·齐克森特米哈伊, 158 , 349
  • Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 158, 349
  • 萨布丽娜·库利巴(Sabrina Culyba),61岁
  • Culyba, Sabrina, 61
  • Jak系列,62
  • Jak series, 62
  • 杰克3,2,238
  • Jak 3, 2, 238
  • Jak X:战斗赛车, 2
  • Jak X: Combat Racing, 2
  • JAM 游戏,74
  • JAM Games, 74
  • Jira 软件, 197 , 279
  • Jira Software, 197, 279
  • 约翰·迈克尔“MJ”,74岁
  • John, Michael “MJ,” 74
  • 乔纳森·马丁,224
  • Jonasson, Martin, 224
  • 日记,15
  • Journaling, 15
  • 榨汁或丢掉(谈话),224
  • Juice It or Lose It (talk), 224
  • 多汁性,223–224
  • Juiciness, 223–224
  • Juul,Jesper,57岁
  • Juul, Jesper, 57
  • 垂直切片,4,133–134
  • Vertical slice, 4, 133–134
  • 成本,213
  • costs of, 213
  • 交付构建,133
  • delivering a build of, 133
  • 从创建开始学习范围,134
  • learning about scope from creation of, 134
  • 游戏测试,134
  • playtesting of, 134
  • 潜在观众,134
  • potential audience, 134
  • 多余的资产,133
  • superfluous assets, 133
  • 用其他材料支撑垂直切片,133–134
  • support of vertical slice with other materials, 133–134
  • 垂直切片,建筑,91–102
  • Vertical slice, building of, 91–102
  • 建设成果,97–99
  • building outcomes, 97–99
  • 交流想法,98
  • communicating ideas, 98
  • 游戏的核心元素,迭代,92–93
  • core elements of your game, iteration on, 92–93
  • 调试功能,添加,95
  • debug functions, adding of, 95
  • 通过建筑进行设计,97–98
  • designing by building, 97–98
  • 设计材料,保存和分类,96
  • design materials, saving and categorizing of, 96
  • 游戏早期序列,创作,92
  • early sequence from the game, creation of, 92
  • 尤里卡!时刻,100
  • eureka! moment, 100
  • 失败,95
  • failure, 95
  • 游戏引擎和硬件平台,承诺,93–94
  • game engine and hardware platform, commitment to, 93–94
  • 收集信息,98–99
  • gathering information, 98–99
  • 家政94,96
  • housekeeping, 94, 96
  • 迭代游戏设计,91
  • iterative game design, 91
  • 前期制作、计划安排,99–100
  • preproduction, scheduling of, 99–100
  • 项目目标,以……为指导,96
  • project goals, being guided by, 96
  • 项目目标,修改,97
  • project goals, modifying of, 97
  • 项目范围,101
  • project scope, 101
  • 原型,工作于,92
  • prototype, working from, 92
  • 时间盒,100–101
  • timeboxing, 100–101
  • 工具和技术,学习,98
  • tools and technology, learning about, 98
  • 瀑布技术,91
  • waterfall technique, 91
  • 在同一物理空间或在线上一起工作,95–96
  • working in same physical space or together online, 95–96
  • 垂直切片,描述,77–90
  • Vertical slice, description of, 77–90
  • 美丽的角落,87–89
  • beautiful corner, 87–89
  • blockmesh 设计流程、样本级别和83–85、86
  • blockmesh design process, sample levels and, 83–85, 86
  • 相机,80–81
  • camera, 80–81
  • 垂直切片的挑战和奖励,89–90
  • challenge and reward of vertical slice, 89–90
  • 角色,79
  • character, 79
  • 对照,81–83
  • control, 81–83
  • 核心循环,77–79
  • core loop, 77–79
  • “舞蹈盒”,80
  • “dance box,” 80
  • 流程图、关卡设计、83–84
  • flowchart, level design, 83–84
  • 可玩级别,79
  • playable levels, 79
  • 玩家角色(头像),79
  • player-character (avatar), 79
  • 特殊序列,78–79
  • special sequences, 78–79
  • 三个C,79–83
  • three Cs, 79–83
  • 垂直切片样本水平、大小和质量,85–87
  • vertical slice sample levels, size and quality of, 85–87
  • 白板, 84 , 85
  • whiteboard, 84, 85
  • 振动反馈。查看 触觉效果
  • Vibration feedback. See Haptic effects
  • 视频游戏营销:学生教科书,64,304,307
  • Video Game Marketing: A Student Textbook, 64, 304, 307
  • 维吉尔,杰西,338
  • Vigil, Jesse, 338
  • 维奥拉·比尔(Viola, Bill)54 , 59
  • Viola, Bill, 54, 59
  • 视觉效果
  • Visual effects
  • 阿尔法里程碑和293
  • alpha milestone and, 293
  • 在测试版中,309
  • at beta, 309
  • blockmesh 流程, 87
  • blockmesh process, 87
  • 同心发展,122
  • concentric development of, 122
  • 多汁,224
  • juiciness and, 224
  • 注释,158
  • notes, 158
  • 后期制作,319
  • postproduction, 319
  • 优先组成部分,184
  • priority components, 184
  • 产值,124
  • production value of, 124
  • 对于二次机械,123
  • for secondary mechanics, 123
  • 垂直切片和77
  • vertical slice and, 77
  • 视觉故事175
  • Visual Story, The, 175
  • 沃格勒,克里斯托弗,148
  • Vogler, Christopher, 148
  • 约克,约翰,143
  • Yorke, John, 143
  • YouTuber,306
  • YouTubers, 306
  • 彼得扎卡里亚森, 64 , 304 , 307
  • Zackariasson, Peter, 64, 304, 307
  • 塞尔达160176
  • Zelda, 160, 176
  • 埃里克·齐默尔曼348
  • Zimmerman, Eric, 348
  • 罗伯特·祖贝克(Robert Zubek)54 岁
  • Zubek, Robert, 54